


Muse

by Sing



Series: I Come Baring Gifts [3]
Category: Sleepy Hollow (TV)
Genre: Angst, Artistry, Creativity, F/M, Magical Realism, Romance, Self-Acceptance, nicholas sparks-ish, supernatural YA-ish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-27
Updated: 2017-08-16
Packaged: 2018-11-19 19:41:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 22,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11320326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sing/pseuds/Sing
Summary: Gift, or curse?There is a sort of consuming power to creation when one gives into it. Whittles away hunger, demolishes all other outside wants and needs. It's greater than a hobby or habit, it seeks to command and drive puppeteer its host if not reigned in.And what if one cannot control this incredible urge?When they turn their back on their innate nature?The own magic inside them?Luke Morales turned his back on home for a reason, and he's come back now, too late for his mothers funeral, to sell off property and cut ties with Sleepy Hollow entirely. But it's Abbie Mills, sitting on the front porch of his home, who seems to know more about him than he'd ever admit to himself.She might hold the key to everything he needs to know about accepting that which haunts him.Or the one thing standing in his way of escaping to the cold bland freedom he has created in the city, and wishes to retreat to.They are locked together under and unusual circumstance.Forced to confront, find, or, reject---The Muse.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nurseya33](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nurseya33/gifts).



> I do not own Sleepy Hollow.

Wind chimes dance and rustle and the air is chilled.

Ringing their song of welcome, sounding a fairy alarm, who could know and who could tell, there out on the porch. Or are they heralding an arrival home at last.

Are they singing, he's home, he's home.

And does she know, they're singing it for her.

* * *

 

"Can I help you?" Abbie asks from where she sits on the porch swing, lifting her head from the book. There's a man at the foot of the driveway and he looks perplexed. "Hello?" she insists, closing the book and waving a hand before his face.

"Do---do you live here?" he queries in seeming disbelief. His eyes roam from the foot of the house upwards, to the second floor and the bedroom window that he knows was once his.

Then his gaze goes to her.

Too many variant shades of black and golden brown dance in her hair. Rippling with curls and waves that hang freely. His depth perception must be off because she holds herself like Goliaththough she is like David, compact strong small, in stature.

An over sized blouse, in a faded reddish hue.

Denimsplattered shorts show off the curve of thigh---- _a long stroke, sinew_ ,---his mind interrupts.

Abbie takes in the suit jacket flung over arm. The rolled up sleeves--- _pinstripe, angled brush_ \---she thinks and the corded muscle stretching beneath his shirt. The light and dark of the evening sun casting shadows behind him---- _chiaroscuro_ \---she wrinkles her brow and tries to focus. Keep her thoughts short. Bullet point.

He's got a hard lined jaw.

Piercing eyes.

Dark hair.

Olive skin.

Might pass for handsome if he didn't scowl so hard.

"Yes I do," she replies proudly. "Been living here, since Ada passed."

"That," he chokes. "That, was….that was just last week." The funeral he hadn't been able to attend. No flights available.

Abbie, with her warm dark skin and straight white smile, nods slowly. "Yes…yes she did. She left the house to me." she says, cocking her head to the side unsurely. "Unless…..unless her son turned up, in which case we're meant to share it……are you?"

He swallows hard and looks away. He won't tear up in front of this strange woman. No matter her height, no matter how sweet.

"Ada Morale's son. Luke."

Abbie inhales deeply and turns her gaze heaven ward, a fleeting brief plea for strength. She gestures towards the front door, inviting him in. "It's about time I got to meet you."

Her voice is warm with a distant note, teetering on a tease.

"I'm sorry, You are? why did my mother leave this to you?"

"Her star pupil, Grace Abigail Mills. Well are you coming in?"

He hesitates as he turns around for his other bag and lugs it up the front steps and Abbie gets the door for him.

The chimes continue to knock and clink a furious little song.

Disturbed or excited---equal parts both.

"Welcome home, Luke."

He looks around in the house he hasn't been home to, in nearly ten years. Ten years of life estranged and wasted and he wills the tide of grief to stay buried deep, down, there, nestled heavy like a rock in his gut. Instead of churning up inside and tumbling out in the broken sob that threatens him at knife point. Not here. Not now.

"Thanks," he rasps, headed for the stairs. "It's…..it's good to be home, I guess."

* * *

 

"I didn't think you'd come, honestly." Abbie says from the doorway. Luke startles at the sound of her voice behind him. He gazes into the room, with the great front view, and the king bed and the lamp and wall paper, faded vines and brocade borders---still the same. Like a capsule. But he glances at the paints and easels, the canvas's and tarps strewn hither and thither. His fingers itch in a way that burns. The last time he'd held a brush-----

"Ada told me, you, that you never looked back."

"I didn't." he concedes, chancing a glance over his shoulder at her.

"I don't mean to be nosey but you're here now, and we were both left in her will."

"You wanna tell me why that is?" he asks, feeling hostile. At least irritation and anger is a emotion he ca wield properly. Not this complicated unwanted grief.

"I've been studying with Ada. After my mother passed, she seemed glad to fill the role, she mentored me and became my friend. We told each other everything." Her eyes meet his.

He doesn't want to like the way they glitter bright in the evening sun that shines through the open window. He doesn't want to acknowledge that were he not hurting, he might have told her, in some none to impressive way, that he thought her eyes were beautiful.

 _Shifting glimmering pinpricks of amber, stippled, dappled with gold light sun, honey kissed sweet like chocolate swirling_ \---He shakes his head aggressively. _Hostile_ , he reminds himself.

"And how long have you been skulking around my mother to wind yourself into an inheritance?"

Her face shutters. "Well she did tell me you were hot headed."

"Did she now?" he accuses. "Did she tell you I don't like strangers either. That----"

"She told me you were afraid of your future so you ran as far away from it as you could. That you spooked at museums and went into trances around swatches of paint---she said it called to you and you feared it---"

"My whole backstory huh. Well listen I wanted more out of my life than painting pretty pictures----"

"And she wanted you. All she painted was you."

There's a sudden sort of venom in her voice that makes him falter.

"This was my room." he says.

"She told me. She favoured you, even more than the things she couldn't control-----" he scoffs at that and Abbie bites her lips together hard to hold back the words battering behind her teeth like a ram. "You want your room back?"

"Actually yes---"

"Well too bad" she snaps sharply.

Anger, irritation, flashes in her eyes black and quick.

 _Inky charcoal speck of white_ \--- ** _stop it_** , he chastises himself.

"You abandon everything that you are and could be and turn up out of the blue and imagine you have right and entitlement here---"

"I'm her _son_ \----"

"Convenient now you remember" she shoots back hotly. "There's a guest room down the hall you take that or you get out."

Luke bristles, tugging his collar. Forced hostility is one thing but to let a true tide of aggravation enter the picture would be just as bad. Stay cool, stay calm, reasonable, he thinks. Cold, blank, likea canvas, no----his fingers tingle---don't think of canvases.

"That's fine by me," he grits out. "Because I'm just here long enough to sell the house, clean out the gallery, and get out of here."

"You're gonna go through me to do that." Abbie says, turning her back on him and headed down the stairs. "Don't let my size fool you, Mr. Morales. I can cut down the mightiest of trees."

 


	2. Chapter 2

"Half pint if that, bossing me around in my own----damn." He sits down heavily on the bed, head in his hands, pressing against the headache building there. It's this damn house, this damn town.

Sleepy Hollow shrouded in all of its mystery and legendary intrigue. A hub for the macabre and eccentric of belief and practice. The town seems inclined to harbour energies that provoke the long dormant thing inside him.

The distracting, gnawing, terrifying urge and impulse that sought to control him had he not got out of town, at last. He'd had no interest in learning more about it, taming it. His mother had called it a gift---but to him it had seemed nothing more than an unfortunate plague. And after what it did to his life---a curse.

* * *

 

His mother, Ada, had it. As did his father, Luca.

Be it rare or not, he doesn't know.

They were both artists. Savants, geniuses. Slaves, to the calling. They could go into trances for hours, painting, creating, forgetting food, forgetting each other----absolutely forgetting their two sons, in the home with them.

But as a child he had liked her rainbow finger prints left over from tummy tickles. His father sculpting dolls for him to play with. Until he grew older, and the gift presented itself in him---he had adored his parents playfulness and creativity, even if it was distracted.

When you are under the age of nine, freedom, no matter how it is won, seems a great joy. Something worth taking absolute and entire advantage of. He would stay out till his friends had to go home after school. Stay up late, watching tv, while mother or father succumbed to their artistry and lost themselves in it.

He distinctly remembers thinking it was beautiful, the way they immersed themselves in creating, and had such sharp beautifully rendered works to show for it after. The gallery opened the year before he had his first bout of it.

The gift, waking up in him.

He was twelve, and approaching that age now where children were less inclined to think your free spirited parents were charming, and more so tended toward the assumption that they were weird. His little brother, Carlos, however, four years his junior, was still enchanted by them.

And why shouldn't he be. Carlos was growing up now in a house of wonder with a brother who came home and made mac and cheese and microwaved hot dogs for dinner.

While his father was abroad, travelling to art showings.

His mother, at the gallery, or upstairs, lost to colours. Paints. Pencils. Brushes.

Carlos wasn't growing up with any feelings of neglect, because Luke was taking care of him now. Their parents……losing themselves to the art. Falling deeper down the whole, surrendering to their compulsion.

But he was twelve, and the class had gone to a museum outside of town. High art place. He'd heard his mother rave of it.

His peers cavorted and laughed but Luke was struck by an odd sense of kinship with the pieces.

Like he could hear the whispers and mutterings of the hands that had slaved over them. As if he could sense the inspiration. The oils and pastes seemed to lift from the frames, calling to him.

His fingers burned.

His mind and vision clouded over with mist.

His heart beat too fast.

There was hot and cold, flashing and flickering through his system.

He had energy that he didn't know what to do with.

Things he couldn't see but needed to show.

He'd screamed.

Panicked, flailed, and then went catatonic and still there in the museum.

He'd been hospitalized for it.

Ada had come, his father would be flying in. But there was his mother with Carlos at his hospital bed.

The doctors had been unable to make sense of it. But his mother had known.

While it had been the gift that brought his parents together----their own unique singular drive, passion, and compulsion---they hadn't considered that there might be adverse affects to their off spring.

A flame plus a flame, is still a flame.

But one that leaps higher, flicker blue red yellow fast, that stretches taller and burns, two, three, four times as hot.

And this was the flame that had struck, in Luke. A an artistic gift, a power he couldn't seem to control.

It was more than needing to create new things.

It was wanting to alter existing things. To give them life. It was needing to pour the power swirling inside him anywhere that would have it.

They'd given him his own room first----but if he touched his hand to the wall when angry it would splinter crackle red and rust brown like blood and black bile.

Happy---technicolor lights would stream from his fingers, painting a swathe across the floor, mesmerizing him, he would stand there for eons gazing upon this one immaterial creation and forget homework, himself.

And because his gift surpassed his parents, they hadn't known how to help him.

Everything triggered him. He would be consumed and unable to stop. They knew he needed to control it but he was becoming aggravated and slow to listen---stubborn.

During this time his father began to drink. It twisted and morphed his talents into frightening things that leapt off pages and berated their mother.

They argued that he should stop but he wouldn't listen.

There was stress and tension building between them, because of his unruly gift. Their bond was fraying, and so frayed the powers they had.

If he had thought his parents commanded by it before, they gave over to it entirely and he watched it, whittle and whittle away at them both. They retreated into the craft to escape their problems.

No more doing it for love but need.

His father drank deeper and deeper.

His mother began to smoke.

Groceries weren't bought.

Money ran out.

And once in a fight they painted rage and heart ache and it caught the house on fire.

Their studio upstairs, next to their bedrooms, in flames.

And the Muse so consumed them they hadn't seem to realize their home was burning, not until Luke had woken to the smell of smoke and run next door to wake his brother and screamed and hollered fright----and his own horrible art awoke then.

In a wave. A white-green foam crested crashing wave, roiling in navy and cerulean blue, washing in from afar,tumultuous and beautiful and terrible. It swept down halls in its mighty unruly current.

Lifted and separated him from his brother---tiny fingers slipping through his own.

His fear made the water churn faster, quicker.

It became blue black foreboding, as they slipped under

It doused the house.

Put out the flames.

Soaked him through.

And it-----

* * *

 

"If you're done unpacking….I cooked." He shouldn't be surprised to find Abbie in the doorway but he is. After the barb she threw at him moments before.

"Is that an invitation?"

"You can make of it what you like." Abbie replies. "I had it in the oven before you came here and I can put you in your place but I can still be cordial and a decent host. You coming down or not"

There's something about her, he can't understand it, but its makes the artists eye within him, too keen and sharp. Make his fingers tingle and a dangerous forgotten part of his being considers frothing up this pent up energy and unleashing it somewhere, anywhere.

It terrifies him, the emotional response that she triggers in him. Or maybe it's the house, with all of it's ill memories. You can barely tell where it almost burned to the ground. Or where is haphazardly had outted those long ago, life altering flames.

Or it might be both---Abbie and house, stirring him up inside and that raises several red flags, sirens and alarms.

"I'd be glad to join you." he says, calmly, distantly. Abbie arches a brow at him.

"You would?"

"We could discuss selling the house. Closing the gallery. Civilly."

"Oh is that what you think we're going to talk about" she folds her arms and leans on the frame, as if she's amused by him.

"I can't be here long, Mi--"

"Abbie's fine."

"Abbie. I've got a life, back in the city. I'm just here to wrap up lose ends and go on my way."

"You could just go now." She says mildly, her head cocked now curiously to the side. "I mean, you obviously don't want to be here. I'll take care of what Ada left me, and you would't have to be bothered. Why'd you come?"

"The lawyer neglected to tell me someone else was in the will." Luke answers, annoyed. "I'd have stayed home had I known."

"Well you know now." She shrugs. "Come have a meal tonight and head home tomorrow, Luke. And you can keep forgetting you came from here."

* * *

 

Luke dragged himself into the shower after she departed, had changed into an open denim shirt over a white tank and khaki pants. He hadn't expected that Abbie would have changed.

But there she was. Just setting out the table.

She'd put on a dress. White, off the shoulder frilled thing. Her hair pulled up.

"You look less miserable cleaned up," she notes without lifting her head.

"You---" he starts, wanting to retort but finding little reason to. The dining room lighting highlights her bare shoulders. He finds his eye zooming in to the dent and curve of bone beneath the skin. The darker shadows below collar bone and the little strip of light that glances across them. He thinks of water colours though he doesn't want to, he shouldn't think any of this at all-----she looks up suddenly as if she could hear him.

"I mean I can serve you standing up, if you prefer?" she says, looking pointedly at the empty seat he's failed to fill.

"You changed." he waves a hand vaguely over her clothes. Another woman he'd have complimented without shame. But with other women his very body and core didn't seem tempted towards some sort of cosmic rebellion. He's been living his life empty and even tempered, glaringly dispassionate since he left Sleepy Hollow. His emotions became dull rumbling background noise. Tonight they feel like a persistent hum that won't leave him alone.

"Thanks for noticing." she drawls. "I'm going out afterwards."

"Oh?" he asks, trying to relax his hold on being frosty, since she seems to have relaxed hers. "You need anything in the kitchen?"

"I've got a red in there if you could use a drink. And if not than pass me the bottle and a glass," she gives a warm sort of chuckle as she dishes and sets down the plates.

He nods and goes into the kitchen---his kitchen---his mother's kitchen---where he grew up. But here is different. The appliances are shinier, sleeker. But allin the same place. He reaches for the vintage red and purses his lips. "I take it this is your favourite?"

"You remember which wine your mother drank but never bothered to visit?" she calls back, voice light.

He clears his throat. "Never knew my mother to be sound of mind enough for taste, that's all." he grabs the two stemmed wine glasses and goes back out into the dining. "They didn't drink…..my parents…..well my father did……after."

He sets down the glasses, uncorks and pours. When he looks up he sees that Abbie is watching him, her gaze searching his. She accepts the glass from him silently and takes a sip, eyes on him at all times.

"Something on my face?" he jokes mildly.

"No. Your mind."

He stammers. "Wha---"

"Let's eat before it gets cold. I don't want to be late."

"Where are you going?"

Abbie seats herself and seemingly ignores him for three bites before swallowing and tucking a loose tendril behind her ear. "You know the place, actually." she says, reaching for her glass she drinks, and licks the stray droplets---- _ruby sweet garnet_ , _felt tip pen, cut clean edges, coloured crayon, magenta, pressing hard into the pink plush softness, impressionist blotted, sensuous curve of lip_ \----he shakes his head vehemently and takes a deep breath.

She's watching him again. With interest. Fora moment it seems as if her face fragments and slams itself back together--- _like a piccasso_ \---his mind, his ever over reaching mind, and the gift chiming in supply helpfully---he blinks hard and thinks of nothingness.

His vision settles. There, the room is still, the walls don't move the colours are not vibrant and he is not twisting and devising some way to render them on a blank page---- ** _don't think of pages_** , he scolds. It's just a room. Just a house. Just a woman.

Abbie is still looking at him.

Aggressively clearing his throat Luke reaches for the glass, raising it in a sort of toast, before sitting down himself and taking a swig, then a bite. He's five bites in before he begins to squirm under the weight of her gaze. But when he looks up, she is concentrated on stabbing a piece of squash with her fork.

Their knives and fork clang and scrape in silence, quietly, slowly, a sluggish time period like molasses. He focuses on the flavours of the food, in crisp,short ways. Recognizes with a pang, the pattern on the dishes.

Brown, orange and cyan rimmed.

He used to make his own make shift dinners for him and Carlos on these plates----had Abbie known? how could she?

* * *

 

He remembers the cyan because the colour used to make him feel happy----before the gift tried to make him lift the lines of colour from the plate and tie and knot them like ribbons and streamers----hanging gleefully from the ceiling and he'd been in a trance as he went up on the table, trying to catch them, to reel them in, but they bobbed and swayed out of reach until----his foot missed, and he'd gone crashing down to kitchen tile, landing on his arm. He spent that summer in a cast.

* * *

 

"We were, in the middle of a conversation, before you drifted off to space there." She interjects. She doesn't wait for him to voice a reply. "I said I'm going somewhere you know."

"I guess this is where I ask 'oh really? where's that?"

She smiles again, throwing back her shoulders and looking a little smug. The white of her dress is a brilliant contrast to her skin. He can see the microscopic little criss crossing and hatching of her skin, sparkling---- _it's getting worse_ , surmises. Abbie's right. He should leave Sleepy Hollow at dawn because it's clear the gift is determined to come on him here.

Draining the glass she grabs her plate. "I thought you'd never ask." her voice lifts into a falsely cheerful cadence. The sort that foretells something unwanted. She comes around to his side and reaches over his shoulder for his plate, turning her lips toward his ear. "The Archives. Your parents gallery."

Visuals, he can blame on the gift.

Smell he cannot. So he lets himself enjoy at least this part of his senses.

Jasmine vanilla coconut and fruit----she smells, wonderful, amazing, like something cool to drink or sweet to taste.

He processes this thought as she goes to the kitchen and returns.

"Well, since you won't be back after tonight, Mr. Morales, you might as well come and see what remains of your parents legacy, yours, before you go back home. Care to join me"

It doesn't feel like all that innocent a request as much as it does a sort of demand. He glances over her again, in her nice dress and then down at himself.

The gallery is the last place he should go. He's had a hard enough time staving off the powers provoked by his own two eyes much less but he hears himself say "Just let me go change."

He excuses himself quickly, dashing up the stairs. Abbie calls up after him.

"And leave the strong silent type cliche you're sporting on the dresser, I wanna enjoy myself."

It shocks him, as he rummages for clothes, and he laughs.


	3. Chapter 3

Ezra Mills, danced.

Lori Mills, painted.

Both born bred and gifted with the extraordinary powers of the Muse. But they were even tempered. They fed off of, and into the craft of the other, never losing themselves entirely in their art alone.

Their artistic endeavours, their love, was a collaborative effort.

And so was rearing their daughter, Abbie. Twice lit with creative flame.

She had an ease with her body, and an eye and deep appreciation for possibilities.

They wielded the magic of their craft fluidly, and made beautiful things---but they had control, where the Morale's had not.

Perhaps because their skills had differed.

Perhaps they found more joy and magic in the other person themselves, as opposed to turning inwards toward their own conjuring. But they raised Abbie without tumult or pain.

Except the natural sort, that came with her mother's passing. The strain of power she'd received from her mother became unruly then and her father had struggled to help her reign it in, even knowing he didn't have the knowledge of it to help.

They'd moved to Sleepy Hollow, five years after the fire that tore the Morale's life apart-----and he had taken her to Ada, had plead with her to help Abbie find her centre.

An anchor for the Muse that had found it's worth and connection in her mother.

As the years went on, Abbie would grow to understand that the power of the Muse wanted only to give and share itself, with reckless abandon. It wanted to go out into the world, to change it, change and touch people. To tell stories, myriad complex ones. Hardship and love and loss---its own narratives the vastly unknown ones, it hungered.

And it would consume its host if they let it.

So the Muse needed balance, an anchor. It needed to have a home, within your heart. Tobe tamed and focused.

Her parents had balanced each other, what they made and created was out of love for the other and for the futures they envisioned.

Abbie had thrived on that, the equal presence of them in her life.

And Ada had taught her----an art she had always said she'd learned too late---how to bind your grief and hurt in a way that fed you, rather than drain. To turn the loss, into acknowledging the love you had, and lives on, so long as you remember, and keep them.

Abbie mastered this from Ada. Painting with her. Letting the visual side of her out to play and found her mother in it.

She could sometimes hear and see her mother when she let it take over, and she found peace. And she was much better prepared, when it was her father's turn to go.

She danced and swayed and leapt her pain and one night in her movement, in her display of loss she'd saw colours weaving and dancing around her as she went. Sprinkling the walls with green and white fairy light spots and the walls warped and mist curled in the air and she knew it was her mother coming to join in her mourning and celebration of her fathers life.

It had broken Abbie down, to the floor, crying and overwhelmed with a fresh sense of loss but also a wholeness, a bareness.

There's an odd freedom in confronting pain. To be near it and feel it and purge.

And she'd flushed it out from her system that night, unleashing starlight where her foot prints walked and streams of rose and violet bending curling and turning from fingertips.

Abbie's peace had been made with loss and acceptance, and keeping her parents lives eternal in her heart. She embraced all of these mysterious curious facets of herself----and Ada had encouraged her always, in more concrete works after, ones to be sold and viewed----The Muse became Abbie, not the other way around.

Her gifts were no longer heirloom talents she possessed.

Abbie became, a Muse.

* * *

 

The Archives Gallery, has changed vastly from when he remembered. More exhibits and branching hallways. And full. Luke doesn't remember the gallery ever being full, stuffed to the brim like this. And to be frank he's grateful for the crowds----they distract his eyes from the paintings and sculptures, keeping his memory at bay of ones that he knows were his fathers. The snarling reds and blues from the landscapes hanging on the walls.

While he manages to keep them from flooding his vision and overwhelming him entirely he still hears them, and it's like that first time when the gift awoke, chattering their stories and their histories to him. Dredging up and threatening to pull out his hidden and repressed memories into light and demanding he give them life. He stays aloof. He stays distant and cool as he mills about the crowd and focuses on something singular instead. Abbie's voice, floating across the room. Her voice tinkles and floats and wraps around, twining into his ear as she discusses different elements and her laugh charms the patrons. The rooms are crisp and clear and buzzing with excitement and polite laughter and intelligent chatter that he doesn't dare listen too intently to. He should be excited, maybe even in awe, of being in a place like this, knowing it belonged to his parents, belongs, now, to him, he should have a sense of pride.

But all that nestles in the pit of his stomach is dread.

Reminders of a childhood gone awry, a gift gone rogue.

The suffering years when this gallery had seemed malicious leech sucking them dry---driving dad to drink----driving mom further into escape in pictures and Carlos----unassuming Carlos-----

"What do you think" Abbie has rounded the facility to be at his side. She holds a glass in hand and offers it to him.

He casts his gaze overhead, at a high corner of ceiling. "It's doing well, I'm glad to see that."

"I meant the art," she presses.

He clears his throat and takes a swig, he nods quickly. "Yeah that's great too."

Abbie sighs and looks around before she side steps down towards another hall. Decidedly more dimly lit and away from the rest of the hubbub. It looks like an older part of the building, something that needs to be refinished. His eyes track her for a moment as she advances into the shadows. He casts a final glance at the all of the people, seemingly so excited and enthralled. A few voices that declare their aspirations and sudden inspiration, to return to their abandoned hobbies. Who want suddenly to give voice and be seen, in a way beyond words. Slowly, he finds his feet drifting toward the quiet and solitude of this other aged wing.

Craggy rock and something like soot grinds beneath his shoes as he follows, the delicate tap tap of her heels since she has already whisked out of sight.

He doesn't know why he's following her.

It's been a day and they have done nothing more than grate on each other's nerves. He's been battling against this cursed talent that brews and swirls inside him but he can't seem to just walk away.

He hates the danger of it.

The pull, that while he knows he needs to, must escape, he can't seem to make himself turn his back again.

It shouldn't be so hard to shun everything that stinks of artistic genius and beguiling talents and powers of manifestation----it shouldn't be so hard to let go of, indeed he did it for years.

Lived like a glacier.

Didn't feel too much.

Didn't get too excited or passionate about anything, fearing the gift would rear its head and destroy everything the way it had once before---

It shouldn't be so **_damning hard_** to abandon it----it hadn't been hard for his parents to abandon him-----

The ground underfoot suddenly shifts into marble tile and opens up into a luminous chamber, high vaulted ceilings and curved walls. Lit sconces illuminate the walls. And there are paintings.

Portraits of----

No.

_No._

His throat feels like its closing up.

He can hear the snap and crackle of flames.

Panic, lancing through his limbs.

* * *

 

little fingers clutched in his.

No.

The water, the tide.

**_No._ **

* * *

 

He spins on his heel to leave but then hears the whisper and thud of doors slamming shut behind him. Abbie guards the way out.

"let me out,"

Abbie shakes her head.

"I promised her I'd bring you here."

" _Let me out_!" he screams.

* * *

 

The roar of water coursing down one hall way, crashing through the next.

**_No._ **

* * *

 

"LET ME OUT ABBIE."

Her eyes brim with water. "It wasn't your fault. They failed you. She failed you, she knew that."

_Carlos._

_No._

_Water._

_Screaming._

_Little fingers slipping from his._

_No_

_NO!_

"She wanted you to know she loved you. She wanted you to know she never forgot about you."

**_Carlos._ **

"Abbie" he rasps, staggering towards her and hears a splash beneath his feet. Abbie glances down at the water filling the floor. At the portrait from where it leaks. "You need to let me out of here---- _I can't_ "

"You can." she says, simple, matter of fact, like she was prepared for this. Like she thinks she can handle what his churned up haunted memories are about to unleash in vivid colour. " let go, Luke."

"I'm going to _hurt_ you if you don't----"

Abbie takes a deep breath as the first wave crashes over her head.

And goes under. 


	4. Chapter 4

They were portraits of him, and Carlos.

Painted, in abstract, in water colour. Blotted blurred, hard edges sharp lines. In every way he could imagine. Some of them together, some of them individual, but they were there. Memories, preserved, encapsulated, on canvas, writhing with colour and his mothers voice, his own, his brothers seemed to rise up out of the images, clamouring for him.

And Luke is assaulted afresh by the things he lost, the night of the fire. The fire that in his haste and panic and worry, he had conjured the water to put it out.

This same water, this tide of tears, a backdrop for a picture Ada had painted of Carlos, a little blue, a little green, cold and waterlogged from within, Luke knew---fluid gathering in his small beloved lungs---with a wreath in his hair. His eyes are closed and his face is peaceful as he seems to keep drifting under. And in the upper corner, the gold kissed brown fingers, tinged with the murky depths reach downwards, clutching and straining for the precious boy drifting away. There's a light shining around this hand. As if there can be anything good or hopeful attached to it.

The visuals of Luke, rendered so lovingly and acutely in such fine detail----wrap tight around his heart and twist in his gut and everything within him tumbles out.

In torrid raging waves and shrieking winds, whirling and curling like a storm raging out at sea. Along all of the walls, lines squiggle and race like the wind, like birds flying in the distance. Dark navy and mauve pool like foreboding clouds. The sconces stutter and shutter, splinter crack like lightening as he goes down, limbs kicking, lungs burning.

Screaming.

Knowing he should but he can't stop screaming because it all hurts. It hurts so deeply.

His mother had been painting him and Carlos for all these years. With such yearning and love, creating these beautiful renderings----and they were triggering the hell out of him---back to a night he had kept wishing he could take back.

He's out of control, overtaken with latent pain and he knows Abbie is somewhere in this submerged room with him. The more he thrashes the more black and purple, mint green seems to shoot out of him, whirling the water in rich detail, pulling and tugging at him, down, down. He can't let history repeat itself. He struggles in the waves, in the darkening water that exists because of him but he can't see her----he can't reach her.

_Little fingers slipping from his_

He catches a glimmer of white, pulling down down, further into darkness and he wrestles to go kicking after it, after her. The water won't calm and it's wearying him. But he has to keep fighting, he can't let what happened to Carlos----

A flash of light erupts from down below, illuminating the sea and he sees her, drifting peacefully---too peacefully,

_No, please God no,_

Drifting peacefully and beautifully under. He zeroes in and goes kicking towards her, and the water flashes again.

It takes him a moment to realize, the light is coming from Abbie.It's her. Beneath her skin bursts of colour erupt like fireworks, green and white fairy light spot, floating up out of her and twining in her hair. Her eyes open calmly, looking at him with interest.

The water still roils above as Luke fights his way to her and he feels triumph as he closes in, realizing a second too late, it's Abbie who is hurtling towards him. Streaking colour behind her as she rises up through the water towards him and her limbs kicking out and spinning as if in a graceful dance. Where she moves there is light. Where she bends, it twinkles.

The foreboding depths of his grief ocean fill with coral and schools of pretty fish. The white dress falls from her torso and explodes into a bloom about her waist like aglimmering shimmering gold and white scaled tail, and then she is flicking and dodging as if in play, freewheeling through the depths and the fairy light specks chase after her, she revels in it as she goes, and the walls wash over with pale pink sunset. And the sconces glow dimly soft blue.

The dark terror turned into stunning beauty as she moves, painting with her body and mind alike. Shadows play off the sunken pirate ship that she wills into being, beams above the surface cast rippling shadows along its stunning, though decaying facade. He finds himself drifting in the water in awe. And then Abbie races towards him and grips his face in her hands.

It's only then he realizes that the sea has calmed.

The water recedes, sweeping back beneath floorboards behind walls, back up into the picture from which it poured. Everything, all of the calming fantasy she had just wrought vanishes quickly, gone, as if it never were. And the pictures that had been floating and washing away remount themselves on easel and wall, as if never troubled.

But their clothes are still wet.

And her hands are still on either side of his face and they are drenched, their chests heaving from exertion---they are the only evidence that something out of the norm transpired here.

The longer he stands there he seems to stabilize but a crisp clear thought cuts through. "Why did----how could you _do_ that to me---"

"It was your mother's request. And after all she'd done for me, taught me---"

"---And what the hell was that?" he blasts incredulously, quickly reeling himself back in to calm. "In the water? you lit up like….like"

_Fireworks, confetti ethereal glowing like a lost goddess, like a thing not of the world, illuminating the dark veins beneath your skin, shifting between mortal and immortal----_

"I can help you." Abbie implores, stepping in closer. She bites her lips and looks away. "Ada asked me, that if you ever came back, I would show you this, and I promised I would, and help you, the way she did me, the way, she wished, she had helped you."

Luke's face crumples and he reaches up for her hands, pulling them away. "I don't want your help," he croaks. "I don't, want this, any of it, nothing of her, she couldn't be bothered to fight for me, she was glad to be rid of me when it happened, when----"

_little fingers slipping from his._

His words choke off on a sob and he sinks down to his knees. "She blamed me," he grunts. "I know she did, that's why she let them take me---"

Abbie joins him on the floor. It's the last thing he wants, the last thing he needs, when her arms curl around him, cradling his head to her chest.

"Breathe," she coaxes, and he tries too. Little gasping hiccuping things that sound wretched and small to his ears. He feels battered and broken in several ways. The portraits look on with eyes softly downturned, as if they pity him. Small patches of black spatter the floor but Abbie doesn't shy away from the ways the gifts shows his hurt. "Breathe,"

"I---It's this thing, it's a curse, and you---you're cursed, let go."

But her grip is surprisingly strong and he lets the tears fall. Lets the floor splatter black and grey and white.

The night he'd tried to save his family and home with the water he'd summoned.

He'd let Carlos go.

"I killed my----"

"It was an accident. You didn't mean to."

* * *

 

That night Carlos drowned.

And the family grieved.

And no one fought for Luke when Child Protective Services came to remove him from the home.

* * *

 

"You were trying to save his life" Abbie stresses, holding tighter. She glances at the floor thats beginning to spike and splinter.

* * *

 

They didn't fight for him, whether or not they were wrong, and they let Luke be marched out of their lives.

Young shoulders weary with the burden of the loss of the brother he had loved and cared for so much.

Blame hot on his head, burrowed under his skin. Guilt coiling and squeezing around his heart.

His gift a traitor---had made him a monster that tore his family apart.

Carlos was died, because of Luke's gift.

* * *

 

"I'm sorry." Abbie says at last. "Luke, I'm....I'm so sorry."

"What are you,"he manages. He can guess, even though it terrifies him, he saw what she did in the water, how she transformed his pain, found light in his darkness. Had created freedom in the midst of his bonds.

Abbie pulls away, straightening her dress and reaching up to tidy her wet hair into a braid.

"Abbie, what are you----"

"A Muse." she answers.

Through the haze of his revisited grief he processes her words slowly. The floors resettle and his breathing slows. "What----"

"A Muse is a source of inspiration. A channeling, guiding force. Heart, core, anchor, motivation of what you do. It's when the gift is more than what just, takes over you, it becomes you, part of you. An extension. My parents, were each others." she says slowly, rising to her feet. "Their gifts were different but they balanced each other---they created for each other, together, dreamed together. But losing my mother made her part of me, rebel. Ada taught me purpose and control. To anchor my gift in their love and memory. I turn within for my inspiration."

Luke frowns.

Abbie's eyes dart to him and then away. It had been a dangerous idea to court to begin with and she should have waited for a lesser impassioned and stubborn artist to come along.

"I can create." she says simply. "I can affect, countless lives, setting their minds on fire with ideas, and it's, it's great."

"Yet……"

"Projecting on my own, still works better with another gifted person present----"

It's a funny thing, truly.

Luke's gift has made him live his life detached, fearful of triggering and unleashing it with emotion.

But Abbie's transformation, mastering her talents has made her so attuned, so natural and beyond that in becoming a Muse, a goddess, truly, her need for the intense emotions has abated.

One holds his feelings in, unable to release the gift.

One overflowing with it, hardly able to feel.

But when Abbie can experience someone else's craft, she feels alive. The well opens up in her and she wants to give and give and help them mould. She can tap into them. But for a while, she has been wanting more than these fleeting brushes and encounters to make her live.

She wants to find a permanent state of freedom, on her own. A pool, a wealth that she can always use.

It's with a small shame that she admits to herself, helping Luke, isn't just about a promise she made to a mentor.

It's about getting her heart to beat and her stomach to flutter and emote like she used to. Conjure, as she used to.

Every deity, big or small, ancient or new, needs to be believed in, worshipped, to have any power of their own.

It's the same for a Muse.

It's the same for Abbie. She needs to be someone's heart, core, anchor----

"Abbie," he presses.

"I can help you,"

"How, how can you----"

"Let me be your Muse. And I'll show you."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so if i'm getting this straight....Abbie low key needs someone to worship her. Or at least, to be inspiring and admired consistently by one person----so she can tap into being a fully engaged emotional woman---cuz you know, semi deity ness kinda dulled that. 
> 
> Luke needs guidance for his gift. So the ability to release his emotions and tame the art.
> 
> So they kinda need each other......but Abbie hasn't told Luke why.......


	5. Chapter 5

Distantly, Luke is aware, that down a hall in a brightly lit room surrounded by culture and like minded peers are the attendees of the gallery. They might as well be in another building, another planet---for how could everything that happened here, in this room with his mother's painting and his dredged up agony and Abbie's own beautiful strange talent have gone unnoticed by everyone else? The doors cannot be that heavy. The walls cannot be soundproof. But yet, there is not curious cautious foot falls prowling outside the room, intrigued by the racket they surely must have made.

But perhaps it is just more of the magic that they make that lends them cover, shields them from the eyes and ears of those that don't, won't, couldn't understand.

He's still on the floor and Abbie's words have been spoken into the air for a brief second where they lived and decayed and around them now is potent silence. With great caution and care he rises to his feet until he is level, and then surpassing her height.

It seems important in that moment that he register her height, and then disregard it.

She is……precious, in stature. But there is power and grace and mystery in her. He knows, in another world, another life, were he another man not afflicted with this bizarre…..power, he would think he could protect her. Save her.

But she is not that damsel, she doesn't need rescue, the way he does. Yet Luke is tired, he is drained, he is still cold in his damp clothes and he can't wrap his head around her words, what they mean, right now. All he can do is refuse, rebuff, clear his head.

"I, I don't…." he huffs, running a hand through his hair, which comes away wet, and goes to wipe it on his wet shirt and curses as he barks a laugh. "Damn it! Ha. Man, oh man," he turns away from her, trying, failing to collect himself. "I don't think so Abbie. I….I just, I don't see how."

"You try, first off." Her voice is calm but determined. Her eyes, _amber light, goldenrod, beautiful, they're striking beautiful and kindle with soft fire and in them is an assurance, a comfort that says he's home_ \----but home, this place, this thing that he is and what _she_ is----took everything from him, disrupted his life and changed him beyond repair.

She's the same thing he is, if not worse.

He can't trust her. She may just easily destroy him, all over again.

"I can't, Abbie….I'm….."

"You like, your half life?" she presses softly. "Always reigning yourself in, trying not to…..not to be, because you're afraid, of yourself? what you are?"

"You've seen, you know, what good I am, to my own life, Mom told you all about it, right? That I killed my brother----"

"You didn't kill----"

"He drowned in my power." Luke retorts, voice tight. "And because I'd…..I'd taken my brothers life, the life of their little boy their darling---I looked after him so much it was like losing my _own_ kid at that age--- they didn't….no one put up a fight when they came for me. They let me go----I lost count of how many foster homes I went to---terrifying their kids when this thing would pop up and wreck something and they'd send me back----one household thought I was the devil and tried to _beat_ it out of me---my parents let me go into that up and down left and right shuffled through the system like some reject. I'd ruined them when this gift woke up. They were glad to be rid of me."

"When Ada had peace ofmind to search for you, you were lost in the system. You'd vanished from her until you turned up in the paper, the cases you won and sentences that got meted out. I watched her try-----"

"The damage is done. There's no reason for me to want, anything here." he says with finality that he doesn't feel.

If he's being honest there's plenty he could want, of Abbie. There's a draw to her that-----

"Stop fighting it," she admonishes. "The minute you got here I could tell you've been battling it. Maybe if you stopped penning it up it wouldn't surprise you like it does."

"Open the doors, Abbie. Please."

Blinking her eyes closed and taking a deep breath Abbie turns around for the doors, swings them wide open invitingly. "After you."

Squaring his shoulders, Luke strides out the doors, down the halls, through the dwindling few left still admiring the works and out the front door, into cold night air.

* * *

 

Abbie went back to an empty house. Luke didn't come straight home. He hasn't skipped town though, at least she supposes not, as she takes in his bag still half unpacked in the room. She goes to her own and tries to visualize, to create without lifting a brush or reaching for a palette. She glances at the tarp covered floor, and watches it splotch with spots of yellow orange and blue. Big ones, small ones, in a haphazard spray, spiderwebbing across the tarp like a Pollock.

It happens easily, quickly, but there's little drive to it, little feeling. She turns within, digging and searching for an emotion to latch on to, and sweeps her arms as she begins to twirl across the floor, getting colour on her feet.

The veins of colour leap up to dance with her, a small whirlwind, a tentative tempest as she moves, slow and careful.

The souls of her feet are paint speckled and she watches her foot prints as they appear on the tarp like a dance matt for children. The art comes easy.

Always easy now.

But the heart, the feeling of elation, joy and sorrow, she has to work so hard to find them these days.

It hadn't been like this, in the beginning. She hadn't noticed this dulling and dimming of her emotions until much later. They seeped from her, one by one, fading into uncomplicated unnecessary things.

What does a Muse have need of such strong feelings for?

What Divine needs so many shades of pain and joy?

They had been retreating from her, little by little, piece by piece, faded and elusive, and easier summoned to the forefront if there was another gift present. Some other creator that she could borrow from to rejuvenate.

But as she is now, dancing amid streamers and confetti of colour---it seems a graceful dance, and no more. Not the freedom and revelry she'd known mired in Luke's outburst.

She hadn't enjoyed, his pain, no.

But she had seen and felt all the potential of his talent, and how it could change and alter, the endless possibilities and her heart had lit up with it.

Moving alone she knows, Luke will take help only if he wants it. And……she'll only get a taste of what she felt tonight, if he'd let her.

* * *

 

It's quiet when he finally goes back to the house. He'd walked around several old familiar blocks, letting his clothes air dry and wondering only after he was going to catch a cold as he'd gone up the front porch steps. The house is shuttered in shadow and he goes upstairs but sees a light on beneath a door.

Mahogany, he notices, his eyes tracing the pattern of wood grain. Chestnut, brown, reddish whorl and curl of the wood, the brass knob,burnished old gold swift round streaks curving bending around a spot of white, where moonlight hits it from the hall window, the shadows and in the hall seem to call to him.

Pluck and shape us, they whisper but he's too exhausted to contemplate it---not that he would. But he does drift toward the door, where the light drifts, and notices its open, just a crack, and where he barely pokes his head he can see the colour sprinkled brown feet, dancing and moving in and out of sight. A glimpse of a hand. A toss of head. He pushes on the door, gently, hoping not to intrude and can see more clearly.

Abbie winds and twirls and her pace increases until the room is churning----more so out of frustration that she has worked hard to muster---and the pretty things she started with turn grey white and murky as she dances herself into a frenzy and kicks up smoke.

But still there is a sense that she commands it, not that it gets away from her.

It disconcerts him, to see her gift create something that looks unsure and hurt and confused----where she had made such clear, apparent beauty earlier.

When she stops abruptly everything turns to ash and she doubles over, heaving. Green and white fairy light like what he'd seen earlier drifts around her, he'd almost believe it speaks to her, the way one twinkles somewhere near her ear and she lifts her head and sees him, watching her.

He stumbles away.

"Luke," she calls, rising to her feet, going to the door but he she just catches the guest room door whispering shut. The lights continue to bob and weave around her as she retreats and with a blink and sweep of arm, the room restores itself. "I'm not like you and dad," she whispers to one speck that lands in her palm. "I don't have a counterweight. I _am_  the balance now. I…..I'm this….entirely too competent thing. I'm barely mortal anymore."

Her toes wriggle, as if being playfully tugged and she's cast back into a memory of herself as a baby, her father tickling her toes and laughing.

The lights dance around her feet and she laughs, just a little. Her parents come to her often this way. To comfort her. They twinkle and twirl encouragements to her mind and limbs. One day she'll wake up again. One day she'll have a heart full to bursting.

She can have it all.

All of the talent and creativity and magic, and, the wonderful, colourful varied exuberance of being human, it will come back, they tell her. Just wait.

"Goodnight, guys." she waves them off, gently dismissing and turns toward the bed. She shouldn't have thought to pin any hope on Luke, just because his nature is wild.

He will leave and she will have to start over.

* * *

 

Abbie is downstairs in the morning, at the breakfast bar, with a rich cup of coffee and the morning paper. It's warm today. She wears her shorts and oversized shirt, vaguely structured looking thing with a wide folded over collar, asymmetric in hem, deliberately buttons one off---it's the style of the thing.

Luke saunters down. Bag in hand. He hears the clink of her setting the cup back down on the counter and doubles back to the kitchen. He stands there a moment, watching her.

He recalls last night, when he'd seen her dance a confused gust of grey----but it was hers, she was frustrated and she wanted the greyness she wanted to push it out into the air around her. But it seemed to be taking a great amount of effort on her part. He remembers sweat beading on her skin.

Now, seated here, calm and oblivious, Luke finds himself wondering if there's something perhaps unresolved about Abbie. He takes in the yellow of her shirt, the fabric---cross hatch shading, stippled sun light playing across the backdrop, awash with diluted browns and blues---for a second he thinks to stop himself, but she had told him last night he ought to try, so maybe, this once he lets the gift go free.

Myriad shades of yellow crash into his eyes as they try to match her shirt, the lines of the fabric reveal their fine stitching, the thread, doubled over and weaving holding it together, lifting as if in salutation and the angular collar----he thinks of shading and angles---seems to slide further down her shoulder revealing more of her beautiful smooth rich skin and then, completely contrary to what he had intended, a button slips free.

And then another.

In his mind he's been setting her up like a portrait, how she would look on canvas, slowing coming undone, but it takes a second to understand the horror of the reality that his gift is----

"What the hell" Abbie snaps, clutching her shirt back together and looking accusingly at the door way where he's ducked out of sight, heaving as he tries to gain control and scolding himself for how wrong that was.

 _See,_ he tells himself, _this power is dangerous and inappropriate._

"Luke!" she calls sharply. "I know you're there you wanna tell me what the hell that was about?"

Pinching the bridge of his nose he emerges into view. "That was a total accident Abbie I swear it, I----I was just trying to, _try,_   with the damn thing and----"

"and the result of your _trying_ is undoing my shirt?" she raises a brow incredulously.

"I told you this thing is out of control and I have no use of it," he fires back. "It was an accident, it did that, and I'm sorry."

Abbie continues glaring at him while she does up the buttons again, watching him carefully. "Well,"

"Well what."

"How did it feel"

Feel?

Obscenely calm and serene as he just stood there and watching the clothing practically remove itself while his eye conjured ways to render her in charcoal and oils. While he thought of sketching around the bare curve of breast where the fabric caressed, and the connecting line of arm to torso. A fleeting curious thought that had wondered if his sense of taste would respond as powerfully as his sight does to her. And yes, the ease of watching those buttons slip free----he'd felt his face flush.

"Okay." he says.

"Just okay?"

"I---"

"Emotion wise," she prompts, eyes keen. "What were you thinking, feeling?"

 _That you're hiding something too,_ he thinks, _that you have a secret to reveal----reveal, the **shirt**_ **-** \---a light bulb goes on in his head and it comes with a surprising gust of elation and a brightness that casts the room in sharp relief.

Abbie blinks and shields her eyes, backing away from him. "Had a moment of clarity?" she queries

"Yes! if I----"

"If?"

He bites his tongue. If he admits right now that he had just for a moment felt an inkling of connection or understanding----however vague and still very inappropriate way it had manifested itself peeling away her shirt to reveal her, an unintentional metaphor for the secrets she may keep----she's going to insist he stays. And he can't. He can't put his life on hold to delve in artistry and magic. He's got a case to finish.

"I've got to go." he says instead and watches Abbie's careful and calculated gaze flicker for a second toward disappointment. It puzzles him.

"Glad you came to see the gallery at least." She says, following him out into the hall, towards the front door. This is how it should be, how it ought to go, he tries to talk himself out of the decision he made this morning, but now that he's had the briefest sense of wielding it without immediate disaster, he is curious, and Abbie's silence and her dance dawdle on his mind.

He's used to looking for clues and figuring things out, getting the whole picture, pardon the pun----and he finds himself wanting to understand more about the woman who can dance colour and is looking at him with guarded eyes now, where she had been forthright with him before.

"I hope to take more time to check it out," he says, swallows, one last moment to back out of what he plans to say but the words come out, regardless. "When I get back, next week."

"Back," she replies with mild shock.

Luke chances a smile. "Yeah. I…..yeah I guess, I'll, try…. I just have to finish up a case I have open right now, but when that's done, I'll… try to figure this thing out. If you'll still help me."

Green and white fairy lights tinkle the wind chimes outside, as if to say 'i told you so' Abbie cuts her eye at the noisy chimes and turns back toward Luke. "Of course. I made the offer I stand by it."

"Great. Okay." he turns to go down the steps and then back around. "I'm sorry, about all of yesterday,"

Abbie's mouth quirks. "Go on."

"You want me to grovel, is that it?"

"No," Abbie laughs. However Luke seems in a better humour all of a sudden and goes down to his knees and bows. The image strikes her both as strange but also deeply satisfying. Mortal and goddess nature wage a small war among her sensibilities.

"I humbly beg forgiveness for being an ass." he says, bowing a few more times and she laughs more.

"Get up Luke, get up."

When he looks up he catches the open brightness of her face and her smile. The one he'd considered complimenting before but had stopped himself. "You have a beautiful smile."

"Thank you."

"No really, I mean to say…..it's perfect."

She's suspicious of the heat that creeps beneath her skin and seems to warm her face. Is she blushing?

He watches the soft pinpricks of colour that rise in her face and he feels……almost, happy.

"Stop flattering," she cajoles as he gets to his feet. "Drive safe."

"I want to learn more about this, but also you." he says.

"Me." she balks.

"I know theres something else, to you. I'd call it fair trade, my dirty laundry for yours." he smiles, a smirk, really, and his eyes dance. " I….I saw you dancing last night…..the grey…."

But she doesn't want to talk about that.

The contrasts in the two of them.

How he feels too much and her not enough.

How her balance slowly strips away her humanity and makes her something that doesn't entirely belong.

She doesn't want to talk about that, not yet.

"Get going!" she gives him a spin towards the car and a light shove.

He loads in the bag and waves at her watching on the porch. "See you next week. I guess it's official now?"

"What?"

"That you're gonna be my, teacher, tutor, whatever on this…." he remembers, "Right. My Muse."

Her fingertips warm and her vision fills with rosy reds and pinks that feel like want and admiration, for just a second quenching a thirst she tries to ignore before she blinks the puffs of colour  away. "Your Muse." she agrees, breathing deeper, feeling her heart give a little flutter.  _Yes_. she thinks.  _I need this._

Luke gets in the car and drives away.

And true to his word, he's back the following week.


	6. Chapter 6

Two months have passed.

They learn each others favourite books, movies, music----she has different types she likes, for singing versus dance---recipes.

They cook together, and one night try to decorate a cake using their gift.

The icing was delicious but then it was everywhere.

Apparently their gift does not interact very well with sugar, neither when consumed nor used as artistic medium---that had been a lesson for both of them.

Something beyond teacher and pupil begins to take route. They see new sides of the other, and they do not turn away.

* * *

 

The first time Luke showed her anger, the red crusty cracking of the walls and the blank wall he turned into flickering flames----she'd been mesmerized by the passion of it.

She had thought to douse it with visions of water, but that still haunted him.

She'd thought of wind and dirt instead. Danced, prancing from one to the other, these little flames, and walking behind sooty prints on the floor. They'd taken it all and hurled it at the canvas----a mottled mess. It looked gross and awful, they'd both agreed amid laughter, and Abbie promptly scrapped it.

* * *

 

The first time he showed her happy, he was sketching clouds in the guest. She'd knocked on the door for dinner and opened to find clouds, a thousand of them, white fluffy, charcoal edges as he whirled a pencil in the air. They'd been trying at happy for a while.

Finding a way to nestle them deep in his heart and hold onto them like beacons of light in dark times . She'd seen him try, specifically at the clouds before, and gotten soft, misshapen unappealing draping white and soggy looking grey.

"Go to the actual happy part, don't let the pain bleed into it," she'd coaxed, and with great effort, pulling on his exerted energy had found enough energy to put out an image of her own purest happiness.

It had shocked her, to be frank, with how readily and vividly it came to mind, gliding on the page and then off it to circle around them.

It had been her father and mother, of course. Dancing, the way she'd seen them do as a child. His grace, and mama's vibrant colours, radiating, shooting off sparks of joy and love. Luke had sat in awe of it a moment, and Abbie failed to hide her tears.

She hadn't been able to properly conjure her parents images for years. Their features had begun to fade and wash in her memory. But here they were, dancing with all their heart, and she was reminded of their love and bond, and reminded cruelly of the things she lacked.

Watching them that day, she knew she wanted what her parents had.

"I don't remember my parents being…..like that." Luke had whispered, and then turned to her, his gaze soft. She'd met his eyes fleetingly before she cleared her throat and with a small leap and turn the dancing images turned to vapour. Green and white fairy light hissed she was being stubborn----wanting so direly for connection, and somehow finding a way to avoid it when put right in front of her.

But she'd ignored it, and gone back to lesson with Luke.

* * *

 

That had been the week before.

They'd tampered with other renderings since then. Sketching, doodles, colour mixing, some history. Just basic, hand to paper, canvas, concrete things----she'd no idea he had been working on his clouds.

But there they were, welcoming, fluffy.

"Congratulations," she'd beamed at him, feeling a little proud. "These look amazing,"

He'd given her a small smirk before whizzing one at her. It broke apart into smaller fluffy bits, released a mist of cyan blue---a happy colour for him she recalled--- when it hit her frame but it made her blink in surprise and laugh. "If it's a war you want, Morales, it's a war you'll get."

"Bring it on then Mills," he'd taunted, reclining, unbothered by her threat on the bed, hands clasped behind his head.

She'd hooked her finger in the nearest one, and thought of frolic, drawing from Luke's playfulness---and then she thought of shrieking laughter and cold and snow, and frosted the edges, turning them a little brittle blue before she hurled it back at him.

Abbie snickered when it clung to his face like a frothy white beard, but also at the way he howled in shock of the cold.

"Mills!"

Sh shrugged as she reached for another cloud, wishing it more solid, frost and ice, and beaned him with it. That one solidified proper like snow, she'd admired the little fine doily intricacy of each little flake that made up her snowball as it went hurtling through the barricade he'd hurriedly tried to erect and iced his chest.

He yelped, leaping off the bed. "That's cold Mills! shit!" and lunged for her, his fingers gripping clouds and air as she performed the neatest little step ball change, out of his grasp and setting herself off in a turn immediately after. "Mills!" he kept calling as he chased her through the room, as she morphed his happy clouds and blinked them blue green and pink, turning and coiling them into shapes and creatures as she moved. Her laughter was pure. She was so alive. His happiness was giving her so much joy.

And the happier she became, the more Luke let the gift flow. Just a pure stream of shimmering colour seemed to ripple off of him. He couldn't remember the last time he had laughed with abandon---let alone, played. And watching her---- ad lib so free and----she was glowing.

Rippling and shimmering as she moved, a vision.

And he forgot to laugh, because the image of her stole his breath.

His power ebbed and flowed around her, and began to reshape her likeness along the walls, the ceiling, she hadn't even seemed to notice he'd stopped their game until she was pirouetting and began to see herself from varied angles---he'd painted her.

Was still, casting his power to create her image.

A dangerous swelling, blooming had begun in her heart as she came to a rest, taking it in. She was touched, by the gesture. In a way that troubled her spirit----what an irony that now she begins to feel she's worried about it---- _how pure is it_ , she wonders.

How much of this is him, and how much of it, _am I bewitching him?_

She doesn't mean to, she prays not.

Because she wants that adoration in his eyes to be real.

She wants to be more than his Muse.

Abbie wants to be his. 


	7. Chapter 7

It's simple, when it happens.

The best thing and the worst, funny how those choose to keep close company.

It happens when Abbie tells him, he doesn't need to come down this weekend, she's got nothing new to teach him yet. It's her own, stupid, doubting idea, because she frets that maybe what brews between her and Luke is not an organic thing but something she's unwittingly forcing. She's never considered, beyond inspiration----what her actual affect on a mortal is.

He'd been there in Sleepy Hollow for a while on saved up vacation time, and he's just gone back to work but making arrangements to come down this weekend and she's sure he'll be glad to be spared the drive but he says; "Oh, Well we can just hang out then."

She'd paused. "You're, still coming?"

"Yeah. Course, you know, to see you."

"You saw me….."

"Five days ago. After being around you day in day out for near two months it's like being in a drought. I miss your laugh, Abbie. Is that so bad?"

"Five days." She reiterates, disbelieving.

"Five long, arduous days" he chuckles. "Don't know how I survived them. So don't plan any getaways, I'll be down friday evening."

"That's a long drive----"

"I'll be down, friday evening. Geez the way you're going on I'd think you didn't want to see me."

"I do!" she chimes too happily and then clears her throat. "I just figured----"

"That I was using you for the magic?" he teases. "Yeah well some of that too, but you've…..grown on me. Hope you can say the same."

She swallows around the lump in her throat and tries very hard not to revisit a troubling dream from the night prior. "Feelings, mutual." she assures.

"Great. See you!"

He hangs up, and Abbie sits down at the dining table, trying not to remember but the images of the previous night come hurtling back.

* * *

 

It starts with her looking at a blank canvas. She's struggling to conjure. It's alarming and scary because for the first time in her life, she wonders if she's lost the art. There is music but her limbs will not move. There is nothing stirring within her at all and she seems at once stripped bare of all facets of immortality and goddess-hood and also her gift and feeling. She is a void.

But then Luke enters the room and lays a hand on her shoulder and as she stares at the emptiness it begins to bloom with a blot of colour, a muted, sunset orange, and keeps blooming and blossoming, rippling like a flower. She takes a breath and inhales deeply and at the same time his arms wrap around her waist, tugging her close to him and she feels her being flood with emotion and vitality.

"I am nothing without you," he murmurs into her hair. She feels him turn his head and when he speaks next his lips brush her shoulder. "I would have none of this without you. And I will be eternally grateful to you, forever, for the freedom you've given me."

In her dream, she'd opened her mouth to protest, to say he's worked hard for what he's achieved and to try to heal but he talks over her.

"You are my Muse." he says warmly. "My inspiration. My goddess. And I would follow you, I would honour you. Worship you, wherever you go."

It feels like a flame sparks at the mention of worship and her power comes rip roaring back to her, surging through her limbs. He spins her around and then he is kissing her cheek, her jaw, down her neck, with his dark lashes fluttered close and he reverentlybegins to sink down to his knees, leaving a trail of kisses as he goes.

Her clothes wash into colourful streams. She feels his lips moving down her skin, as he whispers, "My goddess, my Muse," over and over.

And it feels so wonderful, good to be cherished and revered as he traverses down her thigh, to calf, to her feet, kissing her toes.

"What should I offer to sacrifice for my goddess." he continues, sitting back he takes in the whole of her, eyes full of adoration.

She is writhing with power and glory. Her heart is thundering galloping with a joyous roar and she is drunk on his devotion. "I don't need anything but you," she hears herself say.

And he bows his head, kissing her feet again before shooting to his own and pulling her in, pauses a hair away from her lips, his hand twining in her hair. "Then I offer myself," he pledges.

And exhales.

Cyan blue, green, clouds of white, glittering energy comes surging up out of him, through his lips and into hers; and she drinks it. Drinks all of it in, all of him. His talent, power, gift. She absorbs it.

In her dream, her goddess self thrives on it, pulls him in closer, tenderly, until their lips touch, softly, gently, and his mouth opens and she can taste the gift on her tongue. A thousand myriad flavours and his arms wrap around her but she is taking in his art. Him.

She is draining him.

The more she takes, the more alive she is. She greedily clings to him, holding him closer, kissing him deeper and his hands curve down around her backside.

He is so eager to give her everything, every part of himself, body and spirit he doesn't notice the danger. She can't stop herself.

She doesn't want to hurt him.

Abbie keeps kissing him until he begins to sink back down to the floor. She takes him down, touching him until he is lying prone and gazing up at the ceiling with a look of blissful distance in his eyes.

She is complete. She is all the magic, and now all of the feeling and she is dual and extraordinary----and Luke lies on the floor.

Oblivious, helpless against what she has done to him.

Her goddess self lifts his head and cradles him in her lap, gently, tenderly brushing his hair back from his brow, thanking him for the sacrifice. For giving up everything so she could be.

* * *

 

When Abbie had woken up the dream had terrified her. She wants to believe the dream is nothing but her fears wreaking havoc on her imagination.

She hopes and prays she has no power over him at all.

She wishes she had been more adamant in telling him not to come---but she wants him.

Is it you that wants him or your nature, she asks herself, more confused.

When she thinks of his smile and laugh and cutting humour, part of her fills with warmth and she knows its her. But when she thinks of worship and devotion, the otherworldly of her lifts its sleepy head in intrigue and she is worried. She can't hurt Luke like that, she tells herself. She would never, stand there, and let Luke, give his gift, his essence and being to her in that way. She would never just stand there and willingly take it-----but she would take him, she admits.

Were he to come to her with his heart on his sleeve and soft eyed gaze, with rippling and corded muscular arms winding around her waist and admitting he had feelings for her ----as a woman, she insists, not as a deity, not as something to go down on his knees before like an idol----that she would kiss him back. She would give him what feelings she could muster, and show him, flowing her gift to him instead of the other way around, how he made her feel.

She would sink down to the floor with him, touching him, mapping him, tasting him, and not magic, not colours, but have _him_ , on her tongue.

Feel him. Not magic, not colours, pouring, surging and filling her.

In Abbie's fevered hopes, they would just be man and woman.

He would make love to her. Not worship.

But she cannot know for sure what danger this is, if any at all.

And while she knows she should tell him----she does want to see him. Shewants to spend time with him. Abbie can only hope that her wants overrule the untapped possibility of her needs.

* * *

 

Friday evening.

Abbie carefully sits on the porch, reading. Like the first time they met. She's wearing different clothes however. An orange tiered sundress, that falls off her shoulders and she wears her hair down. She tries to tell herself she looks glowing and natural, and not like she's dressed up. The chimes sing as his car pulls in. She glances up at the green and white fairy lights of her mother and quirks her mouth. "Go," she mouths quietly as the door opens and Luke leaps out, face wreathed with smiles.

"Mills!" he calls, arms thrown wide and comes striding up the steps. She rises to her feet and laughs when his arms encircle her and her feet leave the floor.

"Morales!" she calls back. "Morales, put me down---"

"No," he says, as if thinking and he begins to spin.

"I'll get dizzy Luke, stop----"

But he keeps spinning and she is shrieking before he sets her down and they both stagger, gripping on to each other to stay upright.

"What's wrong with you," she heaves, trying to settle her stomach. Luke grins and shrugs, tousling his hair.

"Just happy to be here, I guess."

"Oh? Why?"

"Considering how much of my life I spent trying to feel nothing you should be excited I could say I feel happy." he counters, going back down the steps for his bag. "And it's thanks to you, helping me gain control of this thing----it's like I'm finally awake. I have my life back."

"Well that was the point. Guess I've fulfilled my promise to Ada."

His face shutters for a moment at the mention of it. He's moved past a lot of the hurts but his family and past are still not something he readily delves into. He gives a weak smile. "Guess you have." he take his bag inside and Abbie trails him, headed to the kitchen.

"Drink?"

"Just water, I wanna be sober tonight."

Abbie furrows her brow as she gets down the glasses. "Why, where are you going?"

"Well, I was thinking we, first off," he chuckles as he comes bounding into the kitchen, swiping one of the filled glasses from her hand and drinking it down greedily. His eyes sweep over her as he does so and she can feel the gift around him, on him. The light airiness of it. Carefree. Happy. "This dress is nice on you," he says, and gladly lets the gift flow, filling his mind with descriptors and tools. He let's himself soak in and enjoy all the details of her his eyes can drink in and licks his lips. Without warning, he reaches out and trails his fingers along her shoulder. Abbie gaze snaps to his hand and then his eyes.

His own eyes follow the path of his fingers, admiring the contrast of her smooth chocolate rich tone against his honeyed brown. "When are you gonna let me paint you."

Abbie scoffs, feeling warm. "You did that the other day, remember----"

He shakes his head thoughtfully, dropping his hand and then reaches to tuck a tendril behind her ear. "No I mean, live. Model for me."

"M-m-m-odel---"

His eyes twinkle. "Yeah. That's when you sit still for long time while some idiot tries to capture your likeness in pencil, or paint or something."

"But…..why?"

"The first day I met you I kept thinking of all these details about you. The fabric of your shirt. The light playing off your skin, the way your skin and cells criss cross and where the shadows are of the muscles and sinew…….." he trails off noticing that Abbie is looking at him with wide, shocked eyes.

"You were thinking all of that, on the first day. When you were being so hostile"

Luke shrugs and averts his gaze but his cheeks flush. "I felt different the moment I got back here. The moment I saw you, I felt the gift trying to get out and I was still……so terrified of it. I'm not scared of it anymore, I have you to thank for that."

"And yourself." Abbie interjects. "You worked hard for yourself."

"Well it's paid off, so I want to enjoy it now. And I want…..I want to try, just using plain old tools, no magic. Just me…..see if I can do you justice. So." his eyes pass over her again and her skin heats. The way he looks at her is markedly different. This isn't the playful ribbing Luke. And this isn't the sometimes worrisome look of adoration that had flit across his face over the last month.

This, is earnest, honest, open and wanting.

Luke wants to spend time with her, be with her, and for just a moment, do something together…..something he's apparently been wanting to do.

Maybe I don't affect him that way, she thinks. Maybe it was just a nightmare.Maybe Luke the man, really, just wants her.

"So when can I-----"

"Tonight." She breathes, her chest rises and falls slowly. "In whatever lighting, from whatever angle your heart desires," she means for it to sound joking and light but it comes out a mite more seductive than she intended.He smiles.

"Great. Listen, I'm going to shower. And you stay in exactly what you've got on. And we'll go for dinner, yeah? my treat."

Abbie shrugs, nonchalant. "Sounds good."

He studies her face a moment before he darts in and lands a kiss on her cheek, letting his lips linger for but a second. His eyes shift to watch something over head. Abbie tips her head back and coughs, trying to disperse the damning little sparks shooting off above her head in champagne gold and rose.

For Luke's part, he likes, is even touched by her unplanned fireworks display. At least he's sure she feels something too. He's not sure when his feelings towards her changed, but they made an aggressive turn in the middle of last month and he hasn't been able, hasn't bothered or tried to turn back.

He's happy with her. Has his art and his life, when he's with her. Why should he walk away from that? As he trudges up the steps he's hopeful that this weekend, with no work for him to finish up, and nothing gift related for him to work on, he's excited to just be here, yes….in his mother's old house, though it's odd to say it, he's excited to be here, with her.

To know more of her, he wants Abbie to share with him and…..he hopes that's something he'll accomplish tonight.

He showers, picks out his favourite navy shirt…..sprays on cologne. "Well, Morales. Let's go."

* * *

 

Dinner is delicious. They go for italian, they order dessert. They laugh. They talk, more about life things. Places they want to travel things they want to see. Dreams they had as children. Things they lost----a brief turn of grief for them both in which they'd gripped hands across the table silently in a moment of contemplation before deciding to put it away---friendships.

They share each other's dessert, laughingly trying to swap dishes when the other isn't looking.

She's enjoying herself, and she catches Luke watching her, with intrigue and warmth yes but no fascination. Nothing dazed in his gaze as if in a trance. No, he's wholly present.

 _I can have this_ , the thought occurs to her, as he calls for the check and they rise to leave.

 _I can have this,_ he thinks, smiling at her as they go through the door, letting his hand rest gingerly on the small of her back.

* * *

 

When they walk into the house Abbie passes her eyes over the rooms on the bottom floor. "So, where do you want me."

"My room, give me a second while I get set up, tarp and stuff."

"Ohhhh-kay then." she swallows. "Am I alright in what I have on?"

"No, I'd prefer you nude."

Abbie pauses, eyes wide. Luke stares her down, expression stony and serious. "Walk that by me again?"

Finally he cracks a smile. "I'm kidding. What ever you're comfortable in, or out of," he adds cheekily. "Get comfy and let me know when you're ready."

* * *

 

He changed into a loose beige shirt, and Abbie, has slipped into her own blush coloured slip dress. She knocks on the door and he tells her to come in. "You're really beautiful." he says frankly as she enters.

"Thank you."

His eyes glitter, she notices as he stares at her, a small smile unfurling across his face as he approaches her on the stool she perched herself on and hooks a finger beneath the satin strap and slides it delicately off her shoulder. "Is this okay" he asks. "You just look so…vulnerable this way."

"You want to see me vulnerable?"

"Yeah." he admits. "I've let down my guards with you. But it feels like sometimes there's just, one more thing, that I'm missing from you. But until you're ready to open up," his thumb strokes her shoulder gently. "I'd like to render you, this way."

"Okay." she concedes. "Anything else?"

"You'd probably be more comfortable lying down, tobe honest,"

Abbie takes the suggestion and meanders to his bed finding a comfortable position to recline in.

"More like this." he offers, hand to her waist he rolls her back on the mattres so she's gazing a little at the ceiling. He lingers there, looming over her. Their eyes latched on to the other until he remembers himself and pulls away, but he lets his hand graze against her as he draws back, bunching the fabric up around a thigh. He drags the stool and canvas over closer so he can see her from the new angle. He walks around her, taking her in, tilting her head, gently. Shifting her leg, in, out.

When he's finished she seems like a softly rumpled woman. Bare and seductive and either just finished with her lover or waiting for him----in short Abbie looks ravishing, and he severely second guesses him positioning her this way to draw her.

There's every likelihood he'll grab for himself instead of the pencil or the brush.

"You ready?"

Abbie inhales deeply and releases a small laugh. "Born ready."


	8. Chapter 8

Abbie watches him, watching her. The way he pauses to catalogue features before returning to task.

"Are you breathing?" he asks.

A shuddery laugh. "Yeah, why"

"Because you're holding yourself so still over there I was starting to get worried. Relax. It's just me," he chuckles.

That's the thing, Abbie thinks. It's just you, and me, lying here on your bed in a slip while you, draw me.

He squints an eye, turns the canvas to face herand suddenly comes over to sit on the edge of the bed. "Look" he points, encouraging her to sit up.

She props herself up on her elbows and he eases her the rest of the way up and Abbie is looking at a black and white etching of herself on the bed. She looks soft, feminine, and……loved.

The care he's taken to illustrate the waves of hair and the plump lines of her lips, her dips and curves as they shift and tug at the slip---Abbie is seeing herself the way Luke, sees her. A desirable, cherished----"It's----"

"I still need to add colour." He cuts in. "Three shades for your eyes, and I've got fuchsia, peach and a magenta for your lips,"

"My lips need three colours?"

"Well I want to get the shading and softness right----"

"Softness?"

"Well, yeah, your lips are like soft, beautiful petals---"

"How would you know" she teases. "About how soft my lips are,"

"I can only speculate." He shrugs, shifting towards her. "But they look, soft." he lifts a hand to her chin and Abbie feels her breath hitch as he leans in closer. "If I were using the gift, I'd have finished this in no time."

"Why don't you?"

"I wouldn't mind spending more nights with you, like this." The tip of his nose grazes hers. "I also want to finish this with just my hands, just me…..for you."

Her gaze flits to his, locking with the intensity in his eyes. "A gift?" she breathes, tipping her head back. "Morales you shouldn't have,"

He smiles lightly and she feels his other hand shift around her back. "I'd….like to give you something else, Abbie, if you'd let me….."

Her beautiful doe eyes blink slowly at him. She licks her lips. "Like,"

"Well…..to start, this."

Luke's lips touch hers softly at first, a brief inventory and assurance that, yes, her lips are indeed as soft as they look, before his lips begin to move, angling his head and Abbie's lips part.

It's tentative and slow, when his tongue slips inside her mouth, searching, tasting, and when hers rises to tangle with his, the tide turns more aggressive, more passionate as she reaches back for him, her hands gripping his arms and sliding up into his hair. She raises herself on her knees to have more leverage and takes control and Luke lets her. He succumbs to the light headed, dizzying feeling of kissing Abbie.

It feels so right.

Be it chemical or magical it feels so much like belonging, it's overwhelming. He finds himself shifting too, to his knees so he can combat her, pushing back, a hand twining in his hair.

Their breath comes faster, their hunger greater. In his grasping movements the straps of her dress slide down and she searches for skin, hands pushing under his shirt, pulling him close. He shivers beneath her fingertips and his own hands search and feel the curve and arch of her back. He breaks apart to kiss her jaw, her neck, up to her ear, inhaling deeply her scent, the taste of her skin. He notices distantly, that her skin is shimmering with sparks. 

Abbie feels as if she's been lit from within. The way her heart hammers, the blood rushes in her ears, the world becomes sharp, crisp and hyper pigmented and then she is falling back on the bed.

He braces himself above her and her legs wrap around his waist.

She is ungoverned, reckless abandon. Abbie thinks for a moment, perhaps she is the one bewitched by Luke, because she is so willing here in his arms, she wants him, needs him. His warmth, his touch and kisses. He breaks apart just to watch her, skin flushed and -----rose gold, blush twinkling, stippled sparks race beneath her skin, a red hued constellation--- and swollen lips and then smiles. His gaze seems dreamy to her, far away. She catches sight of a blue mist seeping between his lips as he breathes.

Her dream.

_Wait._

"Luke," she starts, he pauses, a slight frown on his face.

"Abbie?"

"I…..I need to tell you something."

* * *

 

"You're....what?"

"I'm sorry."

"Why didn't you tell me."

"Because I don't want to hurt you. But I want you," The tears come, fresh and ready to her eyes. Part of her wants to laugh relief that the fear and inner turmoil can conjure itself so quickly, but perhaps it is only evidence of what she takes from him. "I'm _alive_ with you," she whispers, frightened, clutching his shirt even feeling him begin to tug away, a stricken look on his face. "I'm alive with you Luke, but I had a dream and it….I….it almost killed you, and I…..I'm so sorry Luke I never meant."

"So all of this the whole time was just about----"

"I never meant to fall for you."

"I'm supposed to feel better about you using me if no feelings were involved?"

"Luke please."

"I care, about you. _You,_ I want you. And you're telling me that…..you've what, hexed me? That I'm slave to a goddess?"

"I don't know if I did or not, what I've become has never been challenged. All I know is my senses dulled when I found this balance. It gave me too much peace, and I've just wanted to…..to be what I was before. But that comes with feelings, and Luke, I have feelings for you, I want you with _all_ of me, but I can't hurt you to do it----and I can't bare that….maybe it's not real."

He pries her hands off and strides to the door. "I need to clear my head, Abbie. I…..I need to think." he looks back over his shoulder at her there, in his bed. She's still so breathtaking even heartbroken.

Luke feels for her, he does. He understands that gnawing weight of a secret and the fear that comes in parcel with it. But she'd still kept it from him.

After all of the intimate ways she has seen Luke's inner feelings and pain and how that manifests, how she has helped him survive and move past it, it hurts, that this facet of herself, she wouldn't share, before.

His control slips and the gift flows from him, in a coolish rush, streaming from his finger tips in a murky mauve and grey.

She feels his sadness, the way she hurt him. She watches his gift as it spreads across the walls like inky tears and her own power rises to meet it. It goes unbidden, rearing up out of her, her ache.

For a minute they watch their magic working together, making the room weep. Their twin hurts mingling and complimenting and wash the room in grey mauve and navy, and they can feel the conflicted care and hurt mingled in the image they paint. But Abbie says nothing as she sits there, rumpled in the sheets, She averts her gaze and gives over to the gift in a way she hasn't in some time.

Her slip withers and blurs into streams of sadness twined around her body, writhing around her, unrelenting.

The picture of her there is at once haunting and beautiful and the truth is clear.

She is what she says. How could he have missed it. She is otherworldly. She is, inspiration, salvation, beauty, ferocity, ice and fire. Mortal. Immortal. It doesn't matter. 

His.

"Abbie," he starts, rethinking and beginning to cross the room but she shakes her head, far gone now in her new found sorrow. 

"Go please,"

"Abbie, don't, I…it's a lot to process but it doesn't change----"

"Please,"

And when he fails to take heed, the goddess in her takes over, and she vanishes.

 


	9. Chapter 9

She leaves him in greyscale.

He's never seen anything like it.

Every speck and particle of colour. Every hue and shade, each singly minuscule ounce of vitality and life, leeched from the room, the house, with her.

Luke stands there, dumb founded, attacked, by the violence of having all the vibrancy of his gift, wrenched away from him. He staggers against the wall in her wake. Searching and failing to latch onto some fine detail, something like home, something, anything left of her.

He's devastated by the loss of her.

By her hurt and doubt that took hold of her so quickly with such ready vengeance whisked her away----and she is his power, he realizes.

She is his anchor.

His core, heart, home.

His Muse, in more than just the sense of the word.

He needs her, he must find her----and then there, like an answered prayer, green and white fairy light begin to twinkle in the room. He's only ever seen these lights around Abbie.

She thinks that Luke doesn't see her sometimes conversing quietly with them, reminiscing or reprimanding, but they are always welcome around her, whether they seem to pester her or not.

Luke seems to recall hearing them tinkle the wind chimes on the porch. The very first day that he came here, he'd heard them.

He goes towards the lights.

Shining and blinking with his only semblance of hope.

"Hello?" he calls warily as they drift closer to him. "I know you're usually with Abbie," one of the lights blink bright and nearly blind him. "Ouch! guess I'm right?"

Another aggressive blink.

"Do you….you know where she's gone? We had an argument and I….I wasn't as understanding as I could have been. She took off from here, and took…..everything, with her." he pleas. He clutches at his chest. "She took me,"

The lights bob around his head as if considering.

"I'm worried, about her. I've never seen her do that before, and I don't know what she's feeling or how much, but I need to find her, before…..I don't know what, but I can't have anything happen to her. Whatever she is" Luke bites his lips together and blinks hard, trying to rid himself of the tears gathering in his eyes. "Whatever she is, she's mine. And I'm hers."

The lights pause in midair, like a frozen constellation, as if fascinated or shocked by his words before crowding in around him in a rush, almost like an embrace, almost like welcome. They tickle and chatter nonsense.

It is the language of the dead, that only the loved ones left behind can understand.

In her excitement to hear the young mans words, Lori Mills, Abbie's mother come in green and white fairy light, forgets this fact and natters her joy that Abbie has found him and vice versa.

"Can you help me" he demands coldly, quickly irritated by things he can't understand.

They flash bright at the reprimand. Lori does not like being talked back to. While he recovers she pours herself into a stream. She feels herself bend and shape into a path, and knows it is the gentle ebb and flow wind of Ezra come to help her. Together mother and father in their spirit forms pave the way to their troubled, wonderful daughter.

When Luke blinks to clear his vision he sees the shimmering path that seems to trail straight into a wall. He looks at it skeptically but it's his only hope to find Abbie and set things right.

He thinks of how right, things were just moments before, and the briefest flash of colour---cyan blue, his happy hue---casts itself on the shimmering road.

In the drab world she left behind, here lies the path to his heart and joy. Built by the parents who loved and gifted her. Coloured by the way he feels with her, happy.

As if jolted, he feels it begin to leak out of his finger tips.

His shutter shocked gift seems to rear up at the prospect of finding her. Full of hope, and wanting and everything he had with her before her confession----and none of that matters for how she makes him feel. For who he is when with her.

Taking a deep breath, Luke sets foot on the path, determined to find her.

* * *

 

He shouldn't be surprised, but he is, when he is able to walk through the wall following the sparkling blue road. The hue of it deepens as he walks and Luke takes that as a good sign. It means he's getting closer to her.

His surroundings, where he is, where he goes, is irrelevant. He's not paying attention to anything but the path leading him straight to what he wants and needs in his life most---if she's a goddess so be it, and if she needs worship he will kneel at her altar for he wants her.

His feelings for her are too deep to turn away.

Where the road takes him, is a temple.

It storms and bursts inside with colour. Shots of rainbows explode above its roof in a brilliance that is almost angry. The wind churns outside of it, swathes of complimentary shades that clash crackle bang, as they mix and boom into newer hues.

It's at once a beautiful visual cacophony and a terrible recklessness of power. But his pure blue bridge weaves towards and inside it, solidifying and moulding itself into stone and mortar, as he strides tentatively across the bridge, and into what hemust assume now is to be her place of worship. Or where she is to be worshipped.

Inside he the air continues to stir and whir with movement and he catches her in the most fantastic dance, flinging colour and sparks firing from her fingertips and toes at every surface. Her skin ripples with magic, with power. Her eyes white. She is wild and unconfined astonishingly and arrestingly beautiful though in troubled. There is no joy in her movements, more so a reckless, restlessness of her limbs. The images she casts have no form. He watches her wrap herself in it and grow still like marble and stone, vanishing into a columns of white smokebefore appearing across the room.

She seems at war within herself.

And the more she dances, the more vitality and brilliance, the longer her still moments are. The sharper, the cooler, the colder the marble that swiftly washes over her skin.

"Abbie," he calls, marching forward, reaching for her before she twirls out of grasp. "Abbie, I don't care what you are, stop this---"

"I---Can't---" she's there and then not, bouncing across the room. Her dance takes her running up the walls, streams of pink and green and sparks trailing her feet, backflipping into clouds of rainbow tinted mist. Grey fog hovers on the floor, curling upwards as if trying to catch her.

"Abbie---"

"I---can't---stop---I've" she keeps blinking away from him. Out of view out of sight, out of his grasp. "It's---call---ing----me----to"

"To what, Abbie to----"

She twirls towards him and then goes still, frozen in grace, skin quickly washed over in stone. An elegant statue.

An idol.

Panicked, he reaches to touch the smooth cold cheek, down to her arms. "Abbie. Abbie do you hear me, come back, what's happening to you?"

The stone suddenly flinches and shatters. He gasps with fright, watching the fragments hit the floor but then there she is, across the room.

There is starlight in her veins. Diamonds in her eyes.

Twists of sun and moons rays in her hair.

"To be this." she says. "I guess, I guess I felt too, much, and the power, it's greater now than anything I've ever known it's-----"

"Godly," he whispers reverently, and without thinking finds himself sinking to his knees before her.

Through the shining beauty of her eyes he can just glimmer twinkling tears. "No please." she begs. "I don't want this, I don't want to be this, I don't want you to kneel before me----this is everything I was afraid of----"

"But what if I want to."

Abbie pauses. "…..wh….what do you mean?"

"Whether on hands and knees or my own two feet, what if I would do it all, for you."

"I'll destroy you," she intones tearfully. Even her voice now reverberates with an ageless melody, something vast and greater than. He struggles to watch her power becoming her, transforming her, making her not more human, as she had hoped feeling would----but fuelling her gift to make her transcendent. A full goddess in her right.

Something amazingly glorious. Yet it traps her.

"I shouldn't have let it….now I'm….I'll never be able to go back….it's me now, it wasn't…I didn't….."

Stone again, before the mould cracks and she appears before him once more. "It will make me a monument, a thing to pray and make offerings to. To awaken me. And make me sleep otherwise." she reaches to touch his face. "I should have told you." she says softly. "Had I known, maybe….maybe this could have been avoided….."

He reaches back, rising to his feet. "Sssh."

"I'm going, Luke, I'm----" she glances down at her feet. The heavy slab of concrete that manifests there, anchoring her. This time it means it. This time it will solidify her and capture her in her power. A deity to be summoned. The woman gone. He follows her gaze and meets her eyes. "I just wanted to be with you." she whispers, leaning her forehead against his. "I----"

"I'm not leaving."

"Luke----"

" _You're not, going_ ," he hisses, tears gathering in his eyes. Blue mist seeps through his lips and his gift flows from him, around him in a rush.

"You can't stop this----"

He seals his lips over hers. His power, his gift she can taste on her tongue. And he can taste hers. It opens like a channel between them and there are myriad universes of angles colours and visions that dance and ripple between them as his arms wrap closer around her. He kisses her harder, deeper, holding her tight.

His power glows brighter. Illuminating the temple, blooming around them.

If he dies now, he would be happy, here, her arms around him, and her in his.

 _You are the woman of my heart,_ he thinks. And she can hear him. Their art and hearts are open and their power paints their thoughts on the canvas of their mind. She holds him close in her final moments and listens. 

_Moon and stars and sun._

_Red, gold, three shades of pink lips,_

_yellow blouse,_

_sun kissed chocolate pixels of skin,_

_rosy champagnes sparks_

_constellations,_

_fantastic shimmering, gold and white scales of salvation._

_You are hope._

_You are love._

_My, love._

_You are mine._

_And I am **your,**_

**_Muse._ **

The stone washes over them both, locked in a passionate beautiful embrace they stand in the temple, entwined.

A man and a goddess.

Immortalized, forever in marble here----

Green and white fairy light and a gust of wind twinkle and whistle far away wind chimes.

Heralding an arrival home.

Singing, singing----

The stone cracks.


	10. Chapter 10

_Ezra Mills, danced._

_Lori Mills, painted._

_Both born bred and gifted with the extraordinary powers of the Muse._

_They fed off of, and into the craft of the other, never losing themselves entirely in their art alone._

_Their artistic endeavours, their love, was a collaborative effort._

_Perhaps they found more joy and magic in the other person themselves, as opposed to turning inwards toward their own conjuring._

_An anchor for the Muse_

_It needed to have a home, within your heart. Tobe tamed and focused._

_Her parents had balanced each other, what they made and created was out of love for the other and for the futures they envisioned._

* * *

 

There is the rush of the tide in his ears.

Carlos laughs and smiles and waves from the painting, one of the last Ada, his mother had done.

 _I forgive you._ His brother says. _I know you were just trying to protect me, Luke. I love you. I **loved** your gift._

_You can let it go now---you have a tether, a counterweight, a home---let it go._

_Be everything you are._

_Love you._

* * *

 

The stone cracks.

* * *

 

The statue blows apart, the marble into smithereens, a fine powdery dust that wafts through the room and leaves them standing there. For a moment their lips still touch. Their lashes still closed, resting upon their cheekbones. Hands, still lovingly caressing faces and twining around the other holding them tight.

Breath still.

Until they breathe.

A gush of air, like water quenching thirst. Pure golden light, rosyand then cyan mingling together into an orchid rich, pure stream pours out of them as slowly, Abbie's eyes open, and she pulls away.

"Luke," she calls tentatively, marvelling at him, at herself. Her own skin dancing with the universe is nothing new to her.

But it's his. She can see it, feel it, rushing in his veins, meteors moons and suns, zipping across and through him. She brushes her thumbs against his cheekbones and his eyes open as if summoned. They glitter bright, too bright, otherworld diamond, deity illuminated. "Luke?" she asks again.

He beholds her. Eyes still glittering multifaceted. Skin still alive with the beyond. All of the magic of her is there still. But then there is her, concrete human of her, is before him as well. Her two parts, selves, superimposed on the other. Distantly, he notices the change in him, but even that is fleeting. Everything within him, mortal and immortal-----yes.

It dawns on him.

She is his match and he is hers. They are each others, everything. Their hearts call to each other and so does their gift----he turns his head to watch the orchid magic that floats and leaps rapidly, joyously around the room. Their combined power, greater than what they were apart.

They are stronger together, transcendent. Each others Muse.

All they could need and want and the stories they can tell, found in one another, in the dreaming of tomorrows and their future. In the expanse of the eternities they could, can, claim.

Loving her, has meant turning himself over to his true nature, his gift.

It has freed him, to be the man that can keep her. Nourish her.

Has made him the equal, the God, that a Goddess needs.

"You're glowing." Abbie says, laughing a little through tears. She can breathe. The terrifying wildness of her power before it had tried to turn her into an idol has quieted and instead hums around her, merging happily with his gift. Unifying them.

It should scare her, how deep and strong and claiming it is, but all she feels and knows is peace. Happiness. Sure, uncomplicated, she's alive and she can feel.

"So are you." He says at last. For the briefest second his voice has that ageless sage quality to it.

Their godhood sits on their frames, adjusting and wriggling to sink back into their mortal coil. It is an extension of them now that they can command and unleash. But they are, who and what they are now.

Together.

"More than usual." Luke adds, a twinkle in his eye.

"What you were saying before….." Abbie starts.

Luke shakes his head. "Let me show you."

He blinks.

That's all it takes to tap into who he is.

He blinks.

* * *

 

The gallery.

The room that once held the exhibit of pictures from his mother, empty now.

Fairy light and wind gust through, dancing merrily, singing happy in Abbie's ear before they vanish.

A gentle rush of water dashes with them, carrying on its tide a smile and encouragement.

And then, they are alone.

They are solid. Human. Soul bare.

They regard one another. Standing still so close. But even not touching, something about their essence their gift, is caressing the other. Pulling and reaching and longing----he reaches for her hand.

"Dance with me,"

Abbie cocks her head to the side, amused with him. It is odd. It feels in a way as if she could, access him. Tap into his source. The barriers are down and he's so there, so present, available, ripe.

"Go ahead." he encourages. "I can feel it too, but, you go first."

She's not sure what to do, but then his power comes rushing to her in jubilant greeting, and she feels her own go rushing back. She can hear him, feel him.

"Dance with me," he says again, more insistent with a cocky smile. 

"You don't know how----" when he leads her in an artful turn she arches a brow. "No," he laughs. "But you do. I can feel you, and so----"

* * *

 

Neither can be sure, who leads whom.

Who is it, that splatters the walls with splashes of rainbow and technicolor as they dance.

Feet leaving the floor, arms stretching wide, caressing, as they tumble and glide through air, along the walls. Hand over hand and legs that arch high and guided back down and a lift that casts a wheel of colour as he holds her above head, spinning her high and then low and swept into a dip in his arms, guides and sinks her down to the floor. Her fingers thread through his hair, and their lips touch.

For a moment they put the gift aside, revel in their humanity. The simplicity of it. The rhythm of thundering heart beats as her mouth opens and their tongues dance and twine. She arches up against him and puts her weight into rolling them over. His hands glide up to her hips. "Abbie," he whispers.

Her eyes shimmer at him. "Yes?"

"We need music."

A flutter of lash.

The air around them bends into lush warm passionate reds and purples and suddenly there is music, song, pouring from her heart. He grins at her as she rises to her feet, pulling him up with her, and they follow the song, letting nature take over.

_Wise, men, say._

_Only fools, rush, in_

_But I, can't, help, falling in love,_

_with, you._

His arms caress around her waist when he lifts her in a turn and she laughs her glee as his lips press to her cheek. Down the fine smooth column of her throat. His kisses leave behind little fluttering petals of roses and lilies printed on her skin.

_Shall I, stay_

The wall hits her back. Her fingers interlocked with his. Their panting breath is so eager to create it darts up above head, making shapes and figures.

_Would it be, a, sin,_

Fabric, thread and all covering drift away.

Their garments ribbons of rainbows, nothing more.

Now only skin. Hard muscle, supple soft curves. Now only the grain pattern of finger tips to paint the other. To draw upon them the expressions and depictions of what they feel.

_But I, can't, help, falling in love,_

_with, you._

Finger tips streak red on her breasts as he moulds it tenderly in his hand. His lips capture hers again, sucking on her bottom lip before he tugs it with his teeth. A leg hitches up around his waist. Locked together they engage in a turn that doesn't stop, spiralling them up up, up until her back hits ceiling and the world inverts. And they continue there, defying all the laws of gravity and boundary meant for the mere mortal man.

_Like a river flows,_

_surely, to the sea,_

_darling so it goes,_

_somethings,_

_are meant to be,_

Goldenrod yellow rakes down his back from her nails, and up around the shoulders she massages. Soft cyan trail that he paints with his lips, starting at the sweet nipples he suckled down to the haven between her thighs. His tongue and fingers wind her tight with need.

Orchid ripples along his face, where her lips mapped and tasted him.

_Take, my, hand._

The full spectrum like starbursts in their eyes on the first thrust in, slow and deep. Prismatic dimensional pleasure quakes through their bodies.

Too much for human form to take.

Their skin shimmers with the great beyond.

_Take my whole, life, too._

"I love you Abbie." the warm resonant thrumming voice of a God.

"Luke," melodious, harmonious, sonorous voice ofa Goddess. "I love you."

The room rumbles with their passion. Exultant cries of release and completeness.

And start again.

The tender soft streaks of colour left behind from her fingers on his cock.

Mauve, rose, fuchsia, along her behind. Palm prints, where he squeezed and spanked.

When he is buried inside her again, and she sinks down on him, grasping at her breasts as he thrusts up to meet her, the coiling desire building.

Ravenous wanting makes them insatiable.

They never seem to tire.

They paint love on each other into the wee hours of the morning. 

All across the ceiling, along the walls.

The gallery is a mural of them when done.

Their reckless wild, love making.

* * *

 

Abbie wakes with Luke twined around her. They are covered in each others power. As if they toppled head first into a wet canvas. He nuzzles against her. "Abbie?"

She combs her fingers through his hair. "Yes?"

He presses against her and she smirks. "Don't you get tired?" she queries but she is wet for him already.

Chuckling he shifts to align between her thighs. He pins her hands down on either side. "Never," he jokes as he slides in. They groan with the feeling of it. So good and right. "I have the stamina of a God."

"Oh my God," Abbie laughs breathlessly.

"Yes I am." he rumbles.

If he wasn't making her feel so absolutely red hot the way he was moving torturously slow, Abbie would have lamented the many deity related jokes she expects to endure in the future.

But then his speed increases and his body and hers flicker to their Godly natures and when she finds her release it is a watercolour of bliss that she releases before he spills inside her.

* * *

 

With a wish they're back in the house.

Clothing seems a bother.

They stalk about cloaked in their God essence and have one another for sustenance instead of food.

But they do eat. For the pleasure of it.

And in the evening they settle down long enough to be normal, and for him to resume his painting of her. He arranges her as before on the bed, sans the silk dress.

"Was it really just last night," he wonders aloud as he seats himself by the easel and looks lovingly at her.

She rolls over on the bed, smiling adoringly at him. "It was. But now we're here."

"Thank God we are." he grins. "I want this. All of this, us. In every way, Abbie."

His voice shifts and he can't seem to help it. Her own changes to answer.

"We are each others."

Luke abandons the easel and clambers onto the bed, reaching for Abbie, pressing his lips against hers.

_For I,_

_Can't,_

_Help,_

_Falling, in love,_

_With,_

_You._

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can't help falling in love by Elvis.
> 
> This prolly isn't over yet..... heh


	11. Chapter 11

Luke gets a work transfer. First thing.

Him and Abbie move his things into the main bedroom.

They're all the other has left in the world but that's enough for them.

They wake to each other, sleep together.

Make reckless loud, colourful, cosmic, love together.

Paint, canvas and one another.

And yes….worship, the other, a little bit, sometimes too.

He has laid his head lovingly in her lap before,while she combs her fingers through his hair, raking his scalp, and weaving beautiful portraits with her free hand.

And she has rubbed down his shoulders and arms while watching him do his work. Sometimes the regular case files, sometimes his art. Whispering suggestions and endearments in his ear to the point of driving him to distraction.

Only Abbie could make a suggestion to shade a little darker for "that shadow" over there sound like an invitation to drink from a forbidden cup, but that she does.

He's a little bit more easily distracted than she is, and he won't deny, he certainly blames her for most of his unfinished works, and he shows her just how irritated he is with her meddling by loving her so hard and so deep that when she cries out in her pleasure and joythat she screams in rainbows and confetti.

She'll turn away from him after, breathless, heaving, flushed with stars and comets zipping to and fro across her skin and grumping at him as she goes. Trying to revert from Goddess nature back to human. "Damn, passionate, beautiful, _mortal,_ " she curses, but there's no heat in it. Her eyes sparkle with love.

He thinks it's sort of funny that he does that to her. When he pushes her to her brinks, her heights and peaks, that she can't help but transform.

Abbie can make him shift into his God self, however, in a more subtle way. It's in a gentle, unassuming kiss. It's in her hands lazily mapping him and curling up close to him in sleep and he'll wake up changed, intoning "Good morning," in a rumble that twice, had startled her awake with panic before realizing it was just him.

Their love grows and blossoms deep and vibrant.

They open their first exhibit, that winter. A joint show of their works.

Carlos, in one. Her mother and father, in the other.

His mother.

It had been some darker days of painting for them both, conjuring faces and dredging up memories and tears alike to render their loved ones again for all to see. Once they'd tapped into it, it had seemed unwilling to let them go.

Weeping walls and grey murk before they could find the joy in remembering. In keeping those memories alive. They learned each other anew, helping the other paint and work and when they opened, they were both nervous. Clutching and fussing with one another as the patrons walked in, waiting for judgement to be passed, and then to be met with critical, thoughtful observations, and in some cases outright praise.

Their magic is stronger together, ten fold. Standing in the corner observing they feel the energy lift and change with minds excited by the images, shapes, shades and colours. Their fingers interlocking, he tugs her close and breathes her in, lips running along her neck. "If I paint a room, would you follow me," he rumbles.

"Anywhere," she breathes, turning to meet his eyes. He cups her face gently, and they stare intently at one another until her skin begins to heat and she snickers as a star winks beneath his left eye. "Careful," she cautions softly, pressing her thumb there. "Or you're about to morph in front of all these people,"

He leans in, grinning. "This from the woman with a shooting star flying across her collarbone."Abbie looks down immediately.

"I do not, where---"

* * *

 

When she looks back up at him, they're some place new, different, unique.

"Tell the truth," she scolds. "You didn't paint this just now."

Blushing Luke takes her hand, leading her deeper within. It's a similar temple of a place to where they first confessed their love. But it overlooks the ocean. It's evergreen. The stone pillars are beautiful, gleaming. Fragrant flowers bob and sway. "No," he concedes. "I've been….working on this scape, for a while."

It was quite by accident, that they had even toyed with the idea of painting a thing into existence. But then why should they not? They have this extraordinary gift, of course it makes sense, God and Goddess they are makes them also creators. And they has experimented plenty with it. She's taken to painting her wardrobe, or dancing it, depending on her mood. But Luke hasn't dabbled in it as much. So he had been leading her to believe. He'd fussed mildly that getting the dimensions and depth right so that it was a moveable, liveable space taxed him.

He'd clearly been lying, because this scene he has made for them now, is perfect.

"In the middle of our first show," Abbie muses. "You would skip out on it. Nervous?"

"Oh I'm shaking in my shoes." he says, cracking a nervous smile that catches Abbie unawares. She reaches out to him.

"Babe," she calls softly and just like that, it shows how anxious he is, his skin his form, blinker to God, easily, swiftly. She changes with him, for comfort, to be on even plane with him. "Luke, what…what's wrong….."

"Nothing," he smiles, tears gathering in his eyes. His power floats around them, bright, clear, fills her with joyous energy but she can't understand his tears. The way he begins to shake. "Nothing is wrong, Abbie, it's right, it's so right, and I'm scared of how right it is, but….."

"Luke?" she calls again, reaching for his hands, tugging him close, she lifts them and kisses his knuckles. "Talk to me."

"I want this. Forever, and ever, and always, you. I want you, us, to be this way….I love, you. Grace Abigail Mills, mortal immortal you dance in my heart and you weave my life into something…..amazing. I want to keep this."

Abbie's brow wrinkles in confusion. "You have it, Luke, you have me, I love you, I'm not going anywhere,"

"Would you tell the world that," he asks softy.

"Yes." she affirms, without hesitation. She smiles curiously at him. "Yes Luke, no question,"

"Would you wave it like a banner. Wear it like a crown."

Abbie chuckles. "You're being strange, but yes I---- _Luke_ ," she gasps as he sinks to his knees in a bow. Around her feet suddenly there are fruits and flowers over flowing from baskets and jewels and baubles and fine silks and she's amazed his mind can work this fast, she can see the veins in the leaves and the way the apples shine and his power raise up out of him swirling cyan mist tickling her as it goes. The air fills with the smell of vanilla and incense.When he looks up, there is a cushion in his hand and on it rests, indeed, a crown, and a ring. On his own head, a fine, gold circlet. A wreath hangs around his neck, abundant and green.

An offering.

He's made, an offering of himself.

"Be mine." He says. "I will lay, everything at your feet, as a God and as your man. Be my Queen, be my Goddess, my Muse, eternal. Abbie. I love you." He rises to his feet and approaches her, arms outstretched. She reaches for the beautiful shimmering crown, taking it in her hands to marvel at it, and then her eyes hitch on the ring. It's perfect match. "Be my Wife." he asks, eyes glimmering. He trembles but his face is so open.

"Yes." she laughs. "Yes, Luke, Yes."

He exhales relief, laughing nervously as he plucks up the ring, sliding it on her finger, and then takes the crown from her hands and nestles it on her springy curls. He steps back and admires her, hoping he can hold this image in his head long enough to cast it on canvas later, but then lets his hands fall to her waist and he pulls her in close, until their noses are touching. "I love you."

"I love you," she counters, and curling her arms around his neck, leans in until their lips press, and mould. The kiss turns from gentle tide to passionate storm, sinking down into the gifts he conjured, he sweeps them out of the way as he lays her down and tenderly makes love to her there, among the indulgent bed of trinkets and flowers. He wreathes her with a garland as he pulls away and strokes her sides, up to her breasts. His power works and slips little jewelled rings on her toes as she spreads her legs. Her fingers that dance up his spine, nails digging into him on the first thrust become adorned with smaller dainty little bands that match the astonishing diamond encrusted garnet that is her engagement ring.

His magic weaves flowers in her hair as he moves and she lifts her hips beneath him, panting softly, moaning and keening with his deep, slow strokes, taking his time with her. She watches him and imagines a pendant about his neck, a simple knotted gold chain and sets a garnet in it, to match the ring he gave her, watching it materialize and sway as he moves. She writhes with pleasure. How good he feels, how deep and right. Her hands scrabble all over him in her fervour, and his lips are sweet and hungry on hers.

They've abandoned their own art showing to get engaged and make love in a room that exists no where but in his imagination manifest, but who cares.

" _There_ ," she pants. "Oh, _Luke_ , **_there,_** " her voice creeps higher and higher but he grins wickedly at her and then slows. "You **_bastard!_** " she growls. And he chuckles as his hands roam over her skin painting her with flowers and stars.

"Forever now," he assures as he increases speed again.

The pleasure is so sweet and pure, imbued with love, his self, his being, it touches her in all of the sweetest, vibrant, spots, that when she screams for him, when it is too much to contain she sings instead, a clear high note that rings through the air.

A song that trills around them as he pistons forward until he finds his release and bellows in tune with her.

He buries his head in her shoulder, kissing neck around jaw and settling on her mouth again, lovingly, their tongues twiningas she rolls him over and then astride him he looks up at her in a lust filled adoring gaze.

There is literally a Goddess riding him, he thinks as she undulates her hips. His eyes catch on the flowers in her hair, the loving prints he has left on her skin, the twinkling jewels on her neck and in her ears andthe crown that sits at a roguish angle on her hair. The ring glinting on her finger as she locks her fingers with his, sinking upand then down again.

Once they get like this, it can be a small eternity before they tire of the other.

Before they have made the other hoarse with screaming. Bodies weak and trembling from ecstasy.

Power exhausted that it can only smoke softly around them, spent.

Back at the gallery the guests wonder briefly where the hosts have gone but enjoy the show and leave.

* * *

 

Some hours later God and Goddess deign to leave their special little bubble of love and step back into the real world, their clothes restored, everything else falling away, except for the jewels. She has to kick off her shoes because the rings on her toes bite into one another----no matter as Luke persistently swings her up into his arms and carries her, bobbing and laughing back home. She toys with the pendant she hung around his neck, kissing the hollow of his throat. And alternates between holding her crown in place and fixing his that has gone askew. Then she leans into him, admiring her ring finger and smiling to herself. "You're something else," she mutters at last, laughing.

He winks at her. "You bring out a lot of new sides to me."

"I love them all." she confides. "Don't ever doubt it."

Luke leans in and pecks her forehead. "You are the only thing in my life, that I would never doubt. I trust and believe in you Abbie, babe, completely."

At the house he sets her down just long enough to get the door open and they continue celebrations inside.

* * *

 

It's a year later.

And her stomach is high and full.

She reclines on another cushioned chaise in another landscape he has dreamed up.

He's left his former job.

He creates full time now, with her. They run the gallery, hold exhibits, run art classes. Their works sell, becoming more lucrative than they had anticipated.

But one supposes that anything made and borne out of love, must prosper, and prosper it does. She dances, still, or did, until the effort of welding her pregnancy made it difficult.

Now she settles for a slow, warm, two step shuffle with her husband. As close as they can get with her belly in the way, without him upsetting one of the little darlings taking form within.

You see, Abbie Mills-Morales, is having, triplets.

Last time they saw the doctor, he'd said two girls, and a boy.

At this very moment, however, Luke is painting her in her fertile, abundant glory. This could easily be his tenth one. He works faster, these days, even without relying on the gift. He's done one for every month of her pregnancy.

And she cannot be bothered to count how many portraits he has done of her, since they got together, period. The art room is cluttered with them now. She teases in years to come, when they are long dead and gone, people will think he was obsessed. He shrugs.

"I pity them that they could never know a love like this. That it can be the same over and over but still different and amazing, and…..inspire you over and over, and over---" a soft kiss" ---again. Besides. Have you seen the collection you're amassing over there?" he means the living room where she had to move her collection of portraits of him.She blushes.

They are always surrounded by loved ones. Green and white fairy light still dances about the house, chattering gleefully about Abbie's belly. At night sometimes they hear a soothing cooling rush of water. And in the day the air dances and tugs their hair. But only sometimes. Just to remind them, they are not alone, and that they are happy for the pair, embarking on their new life together. 

 They are a perfect match together, and now, they look forward, to their family.

* * *

 

Addie, Lorelei, and Carlos, the second.

Each child named as a tribute to their mothers, and the brother he lost. In loving memory. 

Each, a perfect, beautiful, flawless brown.

Inky black and chestnut curls on each head. All the same pair of warm eyes.

"They're perfect," Luke whispers in awe, his heart full to bursting as he hefts one of his daughters. Abbie looks at him adoringly. "Do you, do you think they have it?" he asks, absently. They are alone in the hospital room.

Abbie looks down at her other daughter and son tucked in her arms. She squints, and can see, as they breathe, little, faint, puffs of colour on their breath. Addie's', fuchsia, Carlos' a mint green. And Lorelei in Luke's arm breathes a warm sweet yellow. She smiles up at him.

"If they do, who better than to help them with it?" She asks.

Their eyes lock and he approaches her with a smile curling his lips and leans in. "No one else I'd rather do it with, than you."

Their lips touch.

Their gift mingles.

The little babes, slumber, happily in their mother and fathers loving arms, amid streams of colours, wafting gently, warmly, through the room. 

 

**_Fin_ **


End file.
